The Girl the World Forgot: Found
by Ridge-Writer
Summary: I decided to blame Quill for all of this, or Star-Lord or whatever other nonsense he insisted on calling himself! If that idiot had just left that orb where he found it then none of this would have happened and I wouldn't be in jail at 17! Movie spoilers! Rated for Language!
1. Wrongly Attacked

**_Hello all!_****_ This is Inquisitor Lily and hopefully this is the final update for this chapter I will do. I hope you all enjoy it and I'll be updating the rest soon!_**

After a limited amount of debate I decided to blame Quill for all of this, or Star-Lord or whatever other nonsense he insisted on calling himself. One way or another this was all entirely his fault! If that idiot had just left that accursed orb on that long forgotten planet then none of this would have happened, and more importantly I would not be on a one way trip to space jail when I was just seventeen years old!

I hadn't even done anything remotely illegal; I hadn't shot, maimed, or stabbed anyone despite the extremely powerful urges that came up during moments of high stress and annoyance. I had been trained to do all of them too, but thankfully I had will power so to avoid going to jail. But then there was one little slip up, which I couldn't barely classify as a slip up, broke my perfect record.

My slip up was caused in part by a very particular fight that I hadn't been involved in, I had only been watching it with mild amusement until I was very wrongly attacked. So yes my response to being attacked was to very purposefully attempt to break somebody's nose, attempt is the key word there. I didn't even break it!

For heaven's sakes I should have been praised for punching a wanted outlaw in the fact, but no! Now I was the bad guy!

Maybe now would be the time to back up a bit, huh? Step back and start from the beginning.

Well firstly my name is Mariella Stark, well it was. I'm still a little iffy on how this whole thing works. Not too long ago I had been a regular-ish high school student in New York City. I was also heir to a multi-billion dollar company, the only daughter of one of the richest and smartest men alive, training to be a member of one of the world's greatest spy organization. And the best of all I had been in love with my best friend in the whole world.

For the first time in my life everything had seemed absolutely perfect; so naturally fate had to throw me a curve ball.

My memory is still a little fuzzy on what exactly had happened, whenever I looked back to remember everything always seemed like it was a dream. I could remember somebody shouting my name over a roar and the ground almost seemed to shake before the world went black.

But when I did finally open my eyes I realized that not everything was how it seemed, I found myself laying on my back in some soft grass… countless miles away from home. I'll clue you in right now, I had woken up in space.

I found that my ash blond hair had been drained of its pigment, turning it into a startlingly soft shade of white. And then there was also my streak, I think I had been born with it. But then again that was just going off my own speculation since there wasn't really anyone I could ask who would really know. It had once been a lighter shade than the rest of my hair, reminding me of that fashion expert Tracey something, but it had now turned a pretty cool looking electric blue. It was almost like some psycho with Photoshop had gotten a hold of my DNA and had decided I needed a paint job.

So to sum it all up: I had found myself on some planet, lost and without a clue as to what was happening or what to do.

For some reason neither my high school nor SHIELD had a class to teach me how to deal with this kind of situation.

Thankfully there was one small lifeline that I could cling to in this chaos; from a young age I had been taught by a very strange man a number of important but probably emotionally scarring lessons. He was an evil man who had recently revealed himself to be a monster, and had of course tried to kill my father. Because everyone did that. Anyways one of those skills he had taught me was the importance of adaptability, something that would have been extremely important if I had become the head of Stark Industries, as unlikely as it seemed at the moment.

I had calmed myself down, mostly through distracting myself. I began by making up a number of possible theories that could explain these events. Well I gave it my best shot with the limited amount of data I had gathered.

My first priority was location, it wouldn't take a genius to uncover that I was one another planet besides earth. After all the soft grass I had found myself on turned out to be blue and the natives were talking asparagus people, well they looked like asparagus anyways. But as I had said I had a limited amount of data I could go off so I was definitely missing more than a few pieces in between.

The asparagus people weren't that much help either as they only wanted to have me for lunch, literally they wanted to eat me. They were polite about it though, but it had still been terrifying and I was sure that I would suffer from nightmares until I was at least forty years old.

But as I said there were theories that I had managed to come up with, the one I found to be the most likely was that I had died. As I said before I don't quite remember how I had died all I know was that it happened. This simple fact led me to believe that this whole thing, in the simplest terms, my afterlife. This strange slightly messed up adventure was what I deserved for living my life the way that I had.

Personally I would have preferred to be reincarnated or something but I supposed I couldn't be too picky, especially when I took into consideration the various different ways humanity had described the afterlife. At the very least I managed to get off the planet of the polite man-eating asparagus people, utilizing some honest money that I had made. Even in space being the daughter of a genius did nothing but help me.

Once off the asparagus home world I discovered that out there in space behold my blue planet there was quite a bit more life out there, and not just the Asgardians. I found myself again wondering if all agent mythology was the result of psycho bored aliens coming down to earth because they wanted something to do. Some of the aliens were even reasonable, some polite like the asparagus people.

I was a little surprised to find that quite a few aliens was actually quite familiar with the planet Earth, though for some reason they called it Tera, and all of them seemed to have almost no interest in it.

They spoke freely about it if I asked, not bothering to sensor what they said since no one seemed to peg me as a human. I guess the change in hair color did have some advantages. I choose to use this to my advantage, as it seemed that most aliens looked down at humans as inferior beings.

To help with my clever ruse I chose not to go by my birth name, as it sounded far too human for my tastes. It took me a little over two days to think up a good alternative, I blamed procrastination for that one.

Fix-It, Widget, Ratchet, Nightingale, Silver, etc. You name it I probably considered it at one point.

It was times like that that I wished Hawkeye was here, when I had been enrolled in SHIELD's program he had been one of my trainers and had promised to help me come up with a cool code name.

In the end I found my name in a moment of nostalgia, when I was thinking of my dad. It was one of those jarring 'holy crap, this shit is real' moments when I realized that one of my biggest goals, to actually get to know my father, had just been torn away from me.

I found it tragic but at the same time it reminded me of some of the biggest lessons that I had ever been taught: Stark's survive.

It didn't matter how, or why, or what we had to do, Stark's always get back up no matter what. If my father could walked out of a twelve months captivity as one of the greatest heroes of our time as one of the greatest phoenix metaphors to date, then so could it.

And that was how Phoenix was born.

I used the multiple skills that I had to build a number of devices, impressive even to the oh so advanced aliens. I decided to make something of myself, follow in my grandfathers footsteps and start out small, as a soft of wandering mechanic.

As it was because of that that I learned what I could really do. But I think I'll leave that as a surprise for now.

The story really kicks up on the lovely planet Xandar, I had made quite a few stops to the planet in my time and I had a few potential deals lined up with some of the locals. One of which was a shady centurion who was willing to pay top dollar (units?) if I managed to repair two very rare ships. After a very interest background check I discovered that he may or may not be the captain of a group of space pirates, commonly know as the Ravagers.

Really I should have taken that as my first clue about how well all of this was going to turn out. But even with my advanced intellect I could never have thought that the events would lead me to teaming up with a talking raccoon, a tree, a green woman with knives, a violently raging psychopath, and a kleptomaniac human playing cowboy.

The first thing that I really noticed was the fight.

I had seated myself down on a bench, with ample time before I was due to meet up with the centurion. So like any modern teen I had decided to kill some time, which I did by checking my emails on my holographic wrist thing, or HWT for short. It also sounded way cooler than the full name.

I hadn't really been that interest in what was happening around me but the commotion sounded exciting and therefore more entertaining than the email from a over-dramatic trophy wife. So I had taken a curious glance up, and then I did a double take when I registered what I had seen.

I raised an eyebrow as I observed what was going on, everyone in the area seemed to be focused on the two fighters in the street. They were laying on their backs, appearing to be doing some form of lazy fighting on the ground.

Either laziness had actually become a major disease or they had better street performers than New York.

One of the fighters was green, and going off the long dark hair and curved figure I would say that she was a girl. But the other one, probably a guy or a very big lady, seemed to be almost... was he human?

Surprisingly I hadn't even considered stepping into stop the fight, growing up in New York I had grown to assume that when there was a fight somebody had certainly done something to deserve it.

And today it looked like it was the guy because the woman shouted as she flipped over onto his chest with what appeared to be a very sharp knife held over her head. As if she was about to sacrifice him for some other reason.

It looked like things were about to take a turn for the bloody.

Thinking quickly I pulled up my recording software that I had built into my HWT when things did not become bloody. You would too if a green chick was tackled football style by a raccoon. That's not even mentioning the walking tree who was holding up what could definitely be called a kidnapping sack.

From here I swear I could hear somebody, possibly the raccoon, ordering someone to put the guy in the bag.

I guess the tree had a gender issue though because instead of the guy he started trying to pull the green girl into the sack. Hey! Stop laughing, it's not that funny!

Filming really seemed like a good reaction to this kind of thing, it was a reaction shared by every New Yorker ever: Find a way to get the best shot possible because this shit belonged on YouTube.

And even then I needed it for the amazing vine it had to potential to become.

So basically I had no idea what was going on and frankly I really didn't care. All I knew was that this was going to be absolutely amazing to watch later.

In fact I was about to get up and move closer so that I could get an even better view only to find that I didn't have to. The guy, who really did look like a human, began running in my general direction. And now that he was off the ground I could easily see that he was wearing some Ravager garb, I wonder if this was the guy I was supposed to meet.

It was about then that the accursed orb I mentioned earlier came into play, from the distance I was it didn't seem like anything special. I hadn't even noticed it until the green girl threw a knife at it. Thankfully (or unfortunately) things didn't really become bloody yet because she had amazing aim. All it really did was knock the orb out of his hand. I got up quickly to follow it, quickly putting the pieces together when I realized that the orb was the center of the fight. I moved towards the edge of the walkway as it rolled down onto the ground below, I opened my mouth about to make some kind of comedic comment.

But then I was attacked.

I had heard him coming up behind me clearly running after the oh so precious orb, but I had assumed that he would have the common sense not to run into me. This will be the last time I ever associate 'common sense' with Quill by the way. Instead of moving maybe two feet to the right or left he hit me head on from behind.

I let out a shriek in surprise as I found myself very suddenly flipping over the railing. There was a rush of air that blew my hair as the ground suddenly got alarming close. I was just opening my mouth to scream when I slammed into the ground at full force.

I laid there stunned for a moment before I finally got control of my limbs and forced myself up, all the while shaking my head forcefully as I tried to stop the ringing in my ears. I winced painfully as my head throbbed, well isn't that lovely! I have a concussion! Just what I wanted!

I blinked my eyes open, attempting to use sheer willpower to make everything turn into something besides blurry figures. It took a moment for everything to come into focus but even then I didn't see the idiot who knocked my off, until the green chick was sent flying into a nearby fountain. Tracing her movements back my eyes locked onto my target, I was up on my feet before I really knew what exactly I was doing. I made a beeline for the jerk who seemed completely at ease, totally unaware that I was about to kick his ass. And he really deserved it since he had just knocked me off a walkway, which could have killed my by the way, and didn't even think to check if I was okay or going to sue him or something.

I mean sure noting's really broken but that's not the point! Good god I sound like a YouTube troll, didn't I?

"Hey!" I shouted suddenly as I stomped over getting his attention very quickly. He turned calmly as if he was about to be greeted by a friend, only to be greeted by my fist connecting with his face. Sadly I hadn't been able to aim the hit properly because I had pulled back just as he was turning, so I didn't manage to break his nose as I had originally intended. I did however manage to send his stumbling back as he clutched his nose probably throbbing nose with his eyes squeezed shut in pain.

Taking advantage of his distraction the tree shoved him into the bag, yet before I got the chance to tackle the idiot and actually break his nose.

"What the what?" I demanded glaring at the tree accusingly, "Hey! I was attacking that guy!"

It might have been my imagination but the tree almost seemed apologetic as it walked pat me. Like a spoiled child who had their toy taken away I crossed my arms with an angry huff turning to watch the tree leave.

I didn't move when the green girl, having recovered from her dip in the fountain, came back and decided to cut off the trees arms.

She made a move for the bag, but as soon as it was opened something shot her in the face sending her flying back again. The jackass in the bag took that chance to make a break for it, apparently realizing that a lot of people wanted to kill him.

You might call me bitter but I didn't like that.

So if I laughed when the raccoon shot him with a very impressive weapon that sent electricity shooting at the jerk, you could hardly blame me. Said ball of electricity made the jerk scream in pain as he collapsed, vengeance was sweet.

I smiled satisfied as I turned ready to walk away and wash my hands of this, and never see any of these people ever again. I only walked about four feet before I was cornered by three armed officers.

"Put your hands up!"

My eyes widened and I blinked startled. I looked back behind me trying to see if one of the crazies were behind me. Finding no one behind me I turned back.

Slowly I raised my hands as I snapped bitterly, "You have got to be kidding me."


	2. But its a Walkman

**_Alright here is chapter 2 updated and hopefully this will be the last update! As much as I love writing this story… yeah I've rewritten these chapter like four times so yeah. Anyways, I hope you all have a good weekend and chapter three might actually be updated by tomorrow. I'm in a writing mode _****_J_**

He was sorry after all of this crap that he had unintentionally put me through he dared to feel remorse. How could I tell? Well for starters there was the way he kept glancing at me during our line, up like one of those boys in school who have done something stupid but don't want to admit it. Later he also tried to make it right by speaking up in my defense when they told us that we had earned a one way trip to the Kyln, which was basically space Alcatraz for those non-space people out there. He even mouthed 'sorry' in my direction when they cuffed me. However I was not in a forgiving mood so his guilt and attempts at appeasement did nothing to quell my unadulterated rage, a rage that I dare say rivals the Hulk's at the moment.

The tree man also seemed to feel a bit bad as well, could trees feel apologetic?

I would have to consider it later, I decided instead continuing to ponder and seam over this whole situation. Just seventeen years old, fresh out of the house and I'm already off to jail. Dad would be so proud.

I had even tried to defend myself but none of the officers seemed willing to listen to me, especially when they checked my record and found that I sort of didn't exist. I may have also assaulted one of the officers who had arrested me, but he was fine... mostly! On the trip the legendary Kyln I made it my personally mission to ensure that we stay in silence, because I knew that if there was any talking of any kind I could snap and go on a vocalized rampage. Whenever one of my fellow occupants of the shuttle would open there mouths as if about to speak I sent them a very heated glare, silently warning of what kind of hell I would unleash if they did. If looks could kill all of them would already be in the ground.

Once we were off the shuttle however my glare lost some of its effect, especially since the only one who was behind me was the tree who didn't seem interested in talking anyways. All the chatty Kathy's were in front of me.

And I blamed all of them. The jackass had the biggest chuck of blame of course for initiating the issue but as far as I was concerned they were now all on my very long list of people to kill.

As we walked down the very boring halls I found myself glaring threateningly at the back of the jackasses head, though I had learned his name was Quill during the line up the name 'jackass' seemed to fit much better. Or the most unlucky guy in space, because the guards had made a very poor decision to put him directly in front of me in the line.

The only thing that was really stopping me from jumping him right then and there was, well first off it was because the tree and the guards would probably try to stop me... that and his name. His first name I learned was Peter, a name that meant more to me than I ever thought possible. He wasn't even close to my Peter, but there was still that little lovesick part of me that missed that adorable weirdo the more I tried to forget him.

"I hate you all." I informed the group, trying desperately to force my attention away from Pete. Instead I forced myself to debate if I should strangle Quill or bite off one of his ears... maybe both! Yeah, both sounded good... except that the tree and the guards were still here. Even moving as fast as I could I could only do one of them successfully, but I wanted to make it as painful as possible.

Uh, I just couldn't win!

"So you have told us," The raccoon snapped from his spot just in front of Quill. He was a vicious little guy for sure, I had managed to catch sight of him taking out a chuck of the one of the guards hands on the way in. I made a mental note to keep clear of his teeth, I had already been bitten by a raccoon I didn't really want to do so again. Even with his small size in play he managed to look back around Quill, so he could properly glare at me as he stressed annoyed, "Many, many, many times!"

"About 42 time," the green woman agreed from the front of the line, in the longest sentence I had heard from her so far.

I growled wordlessly in response clenching and unclenching my hands, glaring at Quill's still mostly exposed neck that was ready for strangling. Quill seemed to sense my murderous intentions because he tried speeding up just a bit. I rolled my eyes at his hurried actions, not like they would help, and instead listened to the raccoon who was saying stuff about the guards here being dirty or something.

"I've escaped twenty-two prisons, this one's not different. You're just lucky the broad showed up 'cause otherwise Groot and I would be collecting that bounty and you'd be getting drawn and quartered by Yondu and those Ravagers."

My focus immediately shifted away from Quill to the raccoon. The name Yondu clicked in my head, it took a moment for me realize why; it was the name of the guy who I was scheduled to meet. Hopefully he was more forgiving than I was, otherwise I would have a very angry group of space pirates to deal with. Who knows, they might thank me for taking out the annoyance that was Quill. But no that wasn't that that really interested me; it was the raccoon's impressive escape record.

The way I see it either I could get this raccoon to help me get out of here, probably by giving him a lot of money, and be out in a day or two. Or I could serve my time like a law abiding citizen and be out in, what was it, like 15-20 years?

I had spent my whole life being law abiding, it wasn't that great.

The raccoon, I should really learn his name but I think if I heard the guards right it was just a random string of numbers like PJ something. Either way he was clearly a mercenary, partnered with the tree I guess, so it should be easy to make a deal. After all there was a lot of money in fixing rich peoples rare machines.

"I've had a lot of folks try to kill me over the years, I ain't about to be brought down by a tree and a talking raccoon," Quill countered glancing back towards the tree, purposefully looking over my and trying to ignore my still murderous glare.

We came to a stop by order of the guards, and I rolled my eyes biting back any comment I had about me killing him.

"What's a raccoon?"

Oh shit.

My face went black as my mind raced. Did the raccoon not realize what he was? Did Quill just unintentionally destroy his life with a throwaway line?

"What's a raccoon?" Quill repeated in disbelief before I could stop him, "It's what you are stupid!"

"Dude!" I hissed at him harshly stabbing him in the side with my finger, "You can't just say stuff like that, idiot!"

"Ain't no thing like me, 'cept me." The raccoon, really gotta figure out his name, insisted ignoring the possibly life changing information Quill had just thrown on him.

"So this orb has a real shiny blue suitcase, arc of the covenant, Maltese falcon sort of vibe. What is it?" Quill questioned moving onto the next topic.

"Okay first off you were almost killed because of that thing and you don't even know what it is?" I snapped in disbelief rolling my eyes, "And secondly that was way too many references in one sentence."

"I am Groot."

Oh that's right, that's what the trees name was.

"So what?" Quill demanded unimpressed, though if he was talking to the tree or me I didn't know. He didn't give a pause as he went on to ask, "What is it?"

"I have no words for an honor-less thief." The green girl replied calmly with an air of disdain. It sounded like she felt she was above all of this.

"Pretty high and mighty coming from the lackey of a genocidal maniac," the raccoon replied knowingly, I really needed to learn his dang name. The green girl looked back surprised at the species confused raccoon who continued, "Yeah I know who you are. Anyone who's anyone knows who you are."

"Yeah we know who you are!" Quill announced proudly before he glanced back asking, "Who is she?"

"Don't look at me." I snapped shaking my head.

"I am Groot," the tree repeated, he seemed very confident that he knew who he was. Quill and I both looked back at him.

"You already said that," I informed the tree narrowing my eyes suspiciously.

"I wasn't retrieving the orb for Ronan," the girl explained exasperated but it only seemed to bring up more questions for me, "I was betraying him. I had an agreement to sell it to a third party."

"Okay hold the phone that sounds like politics!" I announced eyes narrowing before they widened in realization, "No! No, no, no! You did NOT drag me into political BS!"

"I am Groot,"

"Are you real, man?" I demanded not bothering to look back at the tree.

"That's just as fascinating as the first eighty-nine times you told us that," Quill said sarcastically before asking, "What is wrong with giving tree here?"

"Well he don't talk good like me and you," the raccoon explained his leafy friend's actions, "So his vocabulistics are limited to 'I' and 'am' and 'Groot'. Exclusively in that order."

"Great..." I groaned hanging my head only to frown in confusion when something caught my attention. If this was a normal day, well to be more specific, if I was still on Earth I would have ignored it. Except we were in space... and in jail... and that sound did not fit in here.

I listened to it carefully before I was able to pinpoint exactly what I was hearing.

I looked around area suspiciously trying to find where it was coming from.

"I'm sorry, but does anyone else hearing Blue Swede? Where is it coming from?!" I demanded baffled, maybe I had finally lost my mind and this was just a hallucination my brain had conjured up to comfort me. But then why the hell did my brain pick Blue Swede of all things, I would have thought some AC-DC would be at the top of the list.

I kept moving my head around trying to find the source of the noise, I looked back at the tree who seemed to have no idea as to what I was talking about. But it would appear that Quill did.

For the first time since the shuttle ride Quill was dead quiet, and my eyebrow raised when he snapped his head to the side so fast I swore he might have just given himself whiplash. His eyes were wide, and his expression was one of rage.

For a second I thought he was angry at me, or maybe he hated Blue Swede, until I followed his gaze into the open door right next to him. It took me a moment to realize what exactly was so rage inducing about the scene before me.

All I saw was a guard who was going through our possessions, I swear if he touched my HWT I will break his knee, anyway he was blue with an oddly shaped head. What really caught my attention was the oldest piece of tech I had ever seen.

"Is-is that a Walkman?" I demanded a note of horror in my voice. I had seen a Walkman before, when I was a kid and was building stuff. But never had I ever seen anyone actually using one of them, the thought itself was horrifying.

"Hey put that down!" Quill ordered the guard fearlessly. I snapped back to look at him with a wide eyed stare, he couldn't actually be serious could he? Someone who owned a spaceship and had bounty hunters on his tail had to have a better music device than a WALKMAN! Right?

The guard did the exact opposite of Quill's demands, and decided instead to put on the equally old orange headphones, and began nodding his head to the song.

His lack of respect for the dinosaur seemed to make Quill angrier, because not a moment later he did something incredibly stupid. So stupid that I dare say it was the stupidest thing I had ever witnessed.

He bitterly muttered 'you son of a-'under his breath as he effortlessly slipped into the room before the door managed to close. He, in a remarkable show of either bravery or incredibly stupidity, snapped at the guard, "Hey! You big blue bastard! Take those headphones off!"

"Is he serious? He cannot be serious." I insisted glancing towards the rest of the group desperately hoping that somebody could assure me.

"That's mine! Those belong in impound!" Quill yelled in deviance even as the 'big blue bastard' took off the headphones and reached for his tazer. Quill ignored that and continued to shout, "And that player is mine!"

"Oh my god, he's actually serious."

Before Quill could shout anymore he was electrocuted, though he still continued to try arguing about the Walkman even as he basically collapsed on the floor withering in pain. He even went so far as to name the song and the band as if that would prove that it was his.

For a moment I found myself remembering the time I had seen Thor get electrocuted and I realize this was impressive. A tazer had knocked Thor out in under two seconds, about three hits later and this guy was still going.

I dare say I was impressed by his determination, but still slightly appalled at thought of a Walkman actually being used.

What can I say? I was born into one of the greatest ages of modern technology.

Though I will admit a sick twisted part of me felt a ping of satisfaction as I watched Quill being repeatedly shocked. At least I didn't have the urge to bite off his ear anymore, I think I deserved some credit for that.

There was another part of me though that was wincing in sympathy, who wanted to call off the guard as we watched the proceeding. A part of me that realized that that Walkman meant a great deal to Quill, it meant so much to him that he was willing to be basically tortured.

That sympathetic part of me almost convinced me to call out to the guard, about to tell him that the sad withering man on the ground had had enough with the electrocution.

But there was a part of me, a bigger part than both of the other parts. And that part of me was what eventually won out and caused me to speak four words.

"But it's a Walkman."


	3. Going to Stop a Murder

_**Hey guys, here's another update! I have nothing to do right now so I'm just going through all of them! Hope you enjoy!**_

_After the first 12-15 minutes of discipline/torture I was thoroughly satisfied, sure that karma had done it due on Quill for knocking me off the walkway and playing a major part in sending me to jail. And then 5 or 6 minutes later I was pretty sure karma had a check list on Quill that it was going through. _

_I'd say about 2 minutes later I decided it just seemed plain cruel. Thankfully the guard seemed to have finally had his fun and put away the tazer. I was tempted to ask Quill if he was okay as another guard came over and yanked him to his feet. But I decided that that would be pointless, the man had just spent about 20 minutes being electrocuted. He was definitely not fine._

We were very quickly split up to be hosed down.

If you want specific details on said process then I get to call you a sick freak and actually break your nose for being a pervert.

Moving on, after that amazing experience, heavy sarcasm, I had to trade in my favorite beautiful amazing black leather jacket… for a hideous yellow monstrosity that somebody dared to call clothing.

Perhaps I was just being picky or spoiled even, I had been born into luxury; good clothes just came with the package. Sometimes I believed that JARVIS was programmed to automatically buy anything that was either on the runway or that I even mentioned liking. I found that the others were sucking it up, so I figured I'd woman up and do the same.

Doesn't mean I had to like it though.

Once dressed the guards lead us into what I could only assume was the main room, were all the other prisoners seemed to be hanging out. And I decided that without a doubt this was hell. This was hell and it was my punishment for any and all horrible things I had ever done, intentionally and unintentionally.

Does killing a worm count? Because I definitely remember apologizing for that!

The room itself could very easily be described as a disgusting pit of despair that made you wish for fifteen gallons of soap or hand sanitizer. I tried to keep my disgusted sneer to myself as I clutched whatever it was that the guards had given me close to my chest. I also made it a goal to keep as close to Quill as possible without altering him.

He had gotten me into this mess so as far as I was concerned I had every right to use him as a human shield, at least I assumed he was human after the Walkman thing. It was looking like I would need a shield actually, because the other prisoners had taken interest in our group, god I was in a group with these guys, and had started throwing stuff at us.

Now if anyone were to ask me what I did in response I would tell them I caught the garbage and threw it back at them like a total badass. Yeah I didn't do that. My real response was to latch onto the Quill and actually force him to shield me from the garbage, ignore his cry of 'hey' when I did so.

I hesitantly let him go when I realized that they weren't actually just throwing stuff at the newbies, they were just throwing stuff at the green on. They kept shouting at her, but I managed to pick up a name that kept being repeated over and over again. Gamora, I think it was. Either that was her name or it was a new curse.

"What is up with them?" I asked the raccoon. He seemed to be the one with the most prison experience and he knew who Gamora was, which meant he would have the best idea on what was going on.

I had finally learned his name though. Before the guards had lead us into the prison area I heard him muttering something under his breath while glaring at the guards. I could only assume that 'Rocket' was his name unless of course he was threatening to blow up the building.

"Like I said she's got a rep," Rocket explained as we began walking again, "At lot of prisoners have lost their families to Ronan and his goons. She'll last a day, tops."

"Politics," I muttered under my breath shaking my head.

"The guards will protect her, right?" Quill asked sounding almost concerned for Gamora's safety. Not sure why, she tried to kill him not a day ago.

I sighed at his questioned rolling my eyes, "Did you miss the part about dirty guards? Or do you need to revisit the blue bastard for another round of fun?"

"The kid's right, they're here to keep us from escaping. They don't care what we do to each other inside," Rocket agreed looking around the area.

"Whatever nightmares the future holds," Gamora began ominously before I could snap at Rocket. I glanced back at her as she finished, "Are dreams compared to what's behind me."

"Whoa that is surprisingly deep." I complimented her as I continued to walk, because I hadn't been looking I walked right into Quill's stationary back.

Lucky for Quill before I did my first instinct, which was to shove Quill and yell at him, I spotted the blue lumbering oaf who had stepped into Quill's path.

"Check out the new meat!" the blue giant announced causing chills to go down my spine. The alien began examining Quill in a very suggestive and very creepy manor, I wasn't sure if I should be grateful or guilty that he only seemed interest in Quill. My disgust and horror only increased as the blue guy reached over and practically caressed Quill's face as he all but purred suggestively, "I'm gonna slather you up in jelly."

"I'm gonna be sick," I announced meekly covering my mouth.

Whatever other creepy rape-y thing that the blue guy had planned on saying next was interrupted when Groot moved forward and without warning shoved his fingers in the guy's nose. I wasn't fazed for a moment until the man scream in what was probably pain as Groot lifted him clear off the ground seemingly without any effort on Groot's part.

Note to self: get on trees good side.

"Let's make something clear!" Rocket shouted at the now captive audience who had all be silenced by the scream of pain. With everyone's full attention Rocket was free to shout as he pointing at Quill, "This one here's out booty! You wanna get to him, you go through us! Or more accurately, we go though you!"

Groot took this as his cue that the lesson had been learn, so he dropped the hostage. The blue man began rolling in the ground weeping as he clutched his nose. Well that's that, if I was getting out of here the tree and the raccoon were my ticket.

For some reason I let the raccoon and the tree get away from me, which meant I had to spend valuable time hunting them down again. But once I figured out that everyone was avoiding them it was easy to find them at what was once probably a crowded lunch table.

"What do you want?" Rocket demanded looking almost surprised as I stopped in front of them, my arms crossed defensively across my chest.

I took a deep breath settling on what I was going to say. I titled my chin up just enough as I began in my business voice, the one that Stane had taught me all those years ago, "I do not plan on spending twenty years of my life in here. I believe you said you have escaped twenty-two prisons, correct?"

"And if it is?" Rocket demanded narrowing his eyes at me.

"How would you like an additional 6 million units added to your account?" I asked smirking as I set my hand on my hip.

He must have assumed I was joking because as soon as I said this he barked a laugh slapping his knew, only to stop when my expression didn't change. He shook his head at my seriousness scoffing dismissively, "Look kid, didn't you're parents ever teach you-,"

"Each." I interrupted him before I informed him truthfully, "My parents had nothing to do with it."

Rocket and Groot looked at one another, seemingly taken back by my serious offer. It seemed to be a rather heated silent discussion going on between them, until eventually it moved onto being a whisper discussion. They kept glancing at me curiously before finally Groot turned back to me with a warm smile, something I hadn't been expecting, as he announced, "I am Groot."

"Can I get a translation?" I asked hopefully looking to Rocket expectedly.

"You got a deal kid," Rocket announced holding out his hand/paw to finish the deal, which I took shaking it.

"Thanks," I said before I corrected him, "But the names Phoenix."

Nothing else really exciting happened after that, I mostly just starting counting down the minutes until sleep time. Rocket's plan involved sleeping here I guess which was great. On the bright side we were all split up by gender.

On the dark side we have to sleep on the ground.

As I laid there on the ground I discovered that sleep was pretty much impossible at this point. I was way too on edge and my normal method for dealing with insomnia was not an option at this moment, not without my HWT. I wished I had it then I could listen to my music. I almost found myself smiling, because it wasn't really my music.

More accurately I would say it was my dad's music. It was basically the only thing I truly knew about him. When I was really little and was still small enough, I would sneak into his land and hide either in one of the cars or under one of the desks and just listen to the music.

Dad always worked with AC-DC and the like playing. According to some stories that I had heard when I was baby my mom could never get me to go to sleep to regular lullabies. Eventually dad tried singing Highway to Hell and I went right off to sleep.

Speaking of my mom… well that was another reason I couldn't sleep without the HWT.

Sad story short my mother, Anthea, passed away when I was just five years old. I can't remember a thing about her, and there wasn't really anything to remember her by either. When she died dad got rid of all of her stuff; every possession that she owned or reminded him of her was boxed up and sent away. Either to be stored away or destroyed I never knew. And I never really bothered to ask.

Everything that is, except my necklace.

It was one of my earliest memories. I had been sitting in the living room not sure what was going on as men in uniforms went around boxing things up, I remember being confused. But then I spotted it on top of a pile that was due to be sent away. It was small and not easily noticed so I took it.

It was one of my first and only moments of rebellion.

I had gone so far as to design the HWT around it too, with a space where it would fit in perfectly.

In the end I guess it was a good thing that I had been kept awake, otherwise I would have missed when people began trying to murder Gamora.

I figured she would be fine on her own, she had locked herself in one of the solitary pods a while ago and I figured no one would get to her. I was very wrong.

I sat up startled when I heard shouting echoing around the room. I twisted my head towards a shadow on the wall, I could hear a struggle, and if anyone else could hear it I guess they choose to ignore it. Unfortunately for me I still have a conscience so I just had to check out what was going on.

I forced myself up, silently hoping that my sleeping place would remain, moving towards the door and glancing around it just in time to see Gamora being dragged down the hall by a group of mean looking inmates.

I sighed cursing myself; before I could think better of it I carefully but quietly I left the room, expertly following them down the hall.

While it was true that I was a 17 year old girl who life of luxury was ripped away, who spent most of her years being forced back into the background so I wouldn't bother anyone, but there was absolutely no way I was going to stand by and let cold blooded murder go on.

It was time for me to stop a murder.


	4. Worst Plan Ever

I followed swiftly behind the unusual group through the prison, so silently and stealthily that my SHIELD mentors, Tasha, and Clint, would be so proud. Man, I wish they were here. This would be so much more fun with them here. As I followed the group I made sure to keep out of sight, hiding behind a few choice walls and various other spots. Though I did this mostly out of caution, as it seemed that this group did not care if they were followed. They didn't glance back once to check if any highly trained seventeen-year-olds were coming up behind them.

It only seemed to be by chance that we managed to pass by the guy sleeping area, and I managed to glance in for just a moment to meet the startled gaze of Quill. I paused in front of the door glancing between the escaping group and the outlaw. I shrugged helplessly gesturing after Gamora and her abductors. He stared at me in disbelief for a moment before he leaped to his feet and rushed forward, apparently joining me on the 'Save Gamora' quest.

It was comforting to know that I wasn't the only one with a heart around here.

I stepped forward to follow him only for someone much shorter than me, with claws, grabbed onto my wrist and pulled me to a stop with a startling amount of strength. Tensing on impulse I turned back ready for a fight, only to freeze surprise to find Rocket clutching my wrist. He seemed to have just woken up, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. And I would also like to note that half his face seemed to be covered in drool.

Aw man, I wish I had a camera. That would make great blackmail material for later!

"You stay here, girlie." The raccoon order, his voice far too groggy to reach the level of commanding he wished. Also, he was a raccoon, so he was fluffy and therefore sorta adorable.

"I beg your pardon?" I demanded not in the least bit distracted by his fluffiness. I glanced back just in time to see Quill dipping around the corner continuing the hunt. I moved to follow after him only to be pulled back once again by the increasingly annoying Rocket.

"Are you deaf?" Rocket snapped sounding a little more awake.

"No, but I do hope you recognize the stupid that just came out of your mouth," I argued moving to set my free hand on my hip.

"Really, just go get Groot up, will ya?" Rocket hissed agitated. And I do mean hiss. While Rocket may deny it later, his ears bent back like an angry cat. Yeah, I will use that a lot in the future.

"What is your problem, small furry psycho?" I demanded agitated by the smaller figures suggestions. Quickly I nodded back to the sleeping area snapping dismissively, "You can wake him up!"

"No, I need to keep Quill alive!" Rocket argued equally dismissive.

"Quill can keep himself alive!" I argued loudly. We both stood there for a moment as that settled in. Slouching slightly I admitted hesitantly, "Okay, I see you're point."

Rocket rolled his eyes and abruptly released my wrist. For one foolish moment I actually thought he was gonna let me go, only for him to shove me with a surprising amount of force back into the room. If not for my SHIELD training I would have toppled over onto a man who looked suspiciously like a demon.

Silently thanking Clint for his relentless training I shifted to my full height. Frowning steely I spun around ready to give the pushy raccoon a piece of my mind. Rocket turned out to not only be surprisingly strong but also incredibly fast. The speedy little bugger was also running around the corner, his tail just disappearing behind the corner when I turned to look.

Grumbling angrily under my breath to avoid screaming after the raccoon and telling him exactly what I felt about being pushed, I turned back towards the room. At the very least I had something to do after all Groot seemed like a reasonable guy. So maybe he'd help me save Gamora, or maybe I could convince him to punch Rocket in the face for me. Of course, before he did I would have to wake him up. Glancing over the sleeping criminals I found a surprisingly empty area, where a tree appeared to be molding himself into the wall.

"Why am I in charge of the tree?"

You would think that waking up a tree would be a pretty easy, simple thing to do.

You would think wrong!

I could not even begin to fathom how Groot managed to sleep so unbelievably in a prison surrounded by numerous convicted criminals. Some of which were very willing to become murders if they weren't already. I myself couldn't even close my eyes, but here was the walking tree! Ironically sleeping like a rock!

At it seemed that no amount of shaking, knocking, whisper-shouting, or any combination of the three seemed to be able to pull him from his sweet land of dreams. Were all the trees on Earth just sleeping, hibernating until the day they finally rose and took vengeance on us humans for our hand in ruining the planet?

I continued to muse on the possibility of all the trees on Earth becoming sentient, even when I did eventually give up. Dejectedly I plopped down next to the never waking tree at a loss. At least on the bright side Groot seemed to have scared all the prisoners so much that they wouldn't even go near him in sleep. So that left me with plenty of rooms to sit cross-legged on the ground, my cheeks resting on my fists and my elbows resting on my knees. Still I found myself considering new and more creative ways to wake up the tree while at the same time keeping the over convicts asleep.

So far most of them involved fire in some way or another, sadly one of the goals of my plan was to keep him alive so most were thrown out the window. I did now have a number of plans in case the trees did rise up, you know just in case.

"-Could care less whether you live or you die."

Wow, that's a great starter there Quill, really doing good-wait a minute. My eyes snapped open and my head lifted in surprise as I registered who I was hearing. It was definitely Quill, but what was he doing? Oh wait, now I remember. Gamora was being murdered. Hopping to my feet I cautiously made my way over toward the exit of the room, nearly tripping over a pair of incredibly content looking brightly colors men.

Hiding just inside the room I listened carefully hoping to get some background before I rushed into anything here. All the while I heard Gamora demand, "Then why stop the big guy?"

Oh, good she was alive. At least Quill did something right.

"Simple, you know where to sell my orb," Quill replied smoothly sounding surprising like a businessman.

Oh right, the seemingly useless metal paperweight, why was it still relevant? And why was everyone obsessing over an object that seemed, as I said, totally useless? Maybe it was like treasure planet, and it was like a map or something to space pirate treasure.

"How are we gonna sell it when we and it are still here?" Gamora snapped back not in the least bit convinced by Quill's explanation. Suddenly realizing it didn't really matter if I was hiding or note I moved around the corner to lean against the doorway casually.

The four of them stood in the dimly lit halls, most of them looking basically unscathed, looking incredibly serious. They were all so engrossed they didn't even notice me. Quill continued to speak with an air of confidence that I would normally associate with a board member at Stark Industries, "My friend Rocket here, has escaped 22 prisons."

Well Quill surprises me again, he actually does pay attention to the world around him. Wish he could have exercised it earlier though.

"Oh we're getting out of here," Rocket nodded his arms crossed, "And then we're heading straight to Yondu to retrieve you're bounty."

Unable to keep myself quiet I chuckled nonchalantly startling everyone in the room, "Which actually works out great. Because I totally missed a consultation with him."

"Oh, right." Rocket realized unfazed by my appearance, "Phoenix's is with us took."

"Hello again." I greeted waving.

Quill seemed to be taken back for a moment before quickly forcing himself back. Shaking his head he turned his attention back to the conversation to ask Gamora, "How much was your buyer willing to pay for that orb?"

Gamora hesitated for a moment, probably mulling it over in her head as she looked us over again. I had assumed that she would say something along the lines of 10 million units or something. So the real number was more than a little shocking, "5 billion units."

The strange choking device that I made was not unlike a dying squirrel of some kind as I bit back a shout.

"_Holy shit_." Quill gasped sounding just as shocked as I was. To me it wasn't really the money itself that was so surprisingly, but the value of the orb. Honestly what was it? And who in their right mind would pay over a billion units for it?

"That orb is my opportunity to get away from Thanos and Ronan," Gamora paused for a moment looking over us once more before she seemed to come to a decision, "If you free us… I'll split the profit between the four of us."

"I am Groot."

I almost jumped out of my skin when the deep voice rang out directly behind me. Before I managed to trip over my own two feet a wooden hand managed to catch my shoulder steading me. His help did nothing to quell the annoyance I felt when I looked back to see Groot standing behind me wide awake and literally fresh as daises.

Pulling my shoulder out of his grip I shot him a heated glare as I hissed, "You cannot be serious! I just wasted twenty minutes trying to get you up!"

"Five of us," Rocket corrected unfazed once again by his partners appearance, "Asleep for the danger and awake for the cash, as per frickin' usual."

"I want to punch you." I bluntly informed the grinning tree. Taking a deep breath I struggled to settle myself down before I looked to the rest of the group to announce, "Now that that's sorted out, and Gamora is not dead, I going to be getting some sleep. I'll see you in the morning, ya bunch of lunatics. Oh and if you even think about leaving me behind I shall give you a personal demonstration of what being mummified feels like."

Without waiting for any kind of response I made my way back to the sleeping area hoping that I could get some sleep. My hopes were quickly dashed when I came back and found that like quicksand my original spot had been overwhelmed by the girl inmates.

Slouching my shoulders and sighing dejectedly I shook my head, my life sucked. Only for me to be surprised when Gamora suddenly appeared next to me tapping my shoulder. Too annoyed to be surprised I turned to her without a word, with my attention the green woman nodded towards a largish space on the floor. Just big enough for two more people.

Shooting her a thankful look, I moved forward quickly before the space could also be taken over. As I settled myself down I made sure to be as small as possible so there would be enough room for Gamora too. Honestly I didn't think much of having her next to me, but somehow I found it just a tiny bit easier to fall asleep knowing that somebody I sort of knew was nearby.

I didn't even realize I had fallen asleep until my eyes opened and found the room mostly empty. Looks like I was the last one up.

Grumbling under my breath I forced myself up in hope of finding something to eat. They better not have left me behind, or I would blow their stupid ship out of the sky. I had been hoping that there would be some kind of breakfast, only to be mildly disappointed when I got some kind of gray slop that may have possible been alive.

Not willing to risk eating it I skipped breakfast this morning; hopefully we'd get out of this dreadful place before I died of starvation or decided to try eating an alien. I mean it wasn't cannibalism if we were the same species right? I abandoned my tray at a table, where an excited looking blue alien quickly snatched it up. Shivering in disgust I turned back to the room trying to find a member of my fellowship. I was a Tolkien fan, don't judge.

Maybe I should teach these guys about the buddy system when we had the times, this was incredibly frustrating.

Thankfully it wasn't that hard to find Groot, but I wouldn't say I actually spotted him at first. I was making another loop around the watchtower when I found that I was incredibly lucky today. I paused for a moment to get my bearings only for the walking guy directly to my left was abruptly knocked unconscious by some kind of flying projectile.

With a surprising level of calm I turned around to look where the projectile had come for. It was then that I found Groot by the guard tower. He had grown his legs up so he could reach a metal box that was much higher on the tower. Was he messing with the watch tower wiring?

Curiosity overwhelming me I made my way over to the other side of the tower, hoping to get a better angle so I could see what exactly he was doing. I stood there for a moment as I watched the event, it was then that somebody stopped right next to me alarmingly close.

Almost jumping in surprise, I turned to see who had invaded my personal bubble. I only seemed to come up to his shoulder, and he was probably double my size with all his muscles. His skin was a sort of grayish blue with various red tattoos covering his body, he was also shirtless.

"Hi," I greeted hesitantly.

He turned to me with mild interest and in a deep voice rumbled, "Greetings."

Well, alright then. I didn't even attempt to engage in anymore conversation with this man, instead choosing to watch Groot once again. I titled my head curiously when I saw Groot removing the quarnix batter from the tower.

I'll admit I wasn't an expert in watch towers but I did know a few things about batteries like these, if he pulled it out completely everything would slam into emergency mode. Which would make it incredibly difficult for us to escape. Concerned I began looking around once more for more members of the fellowship, because this was gonna get really bad really fast in a moment.

I managed to spot Rocket, Quill, and Gamora settled down at one of the tables appearing to have a very serious conversation. So was this crap part of the plan then, or what?

My mouth opened, Groot's name on the tip of my tongue only for the words to die in my throat as Groot violently yanked out the battery. Carelessly wrenching it free from the wires that connected it to the tower. When he did finally free the battery… well everything totally hit the fan. The lights shut down for a moment plunging the room into complete darkness for a second. The room was quiet and completely still before the room was once again lit up. Only this time it was by flashing red lights, with loud alarms on the side.

Groot did not seem concerned or even the least bit affected by any of this, he only smiled as he turned around holding out the battery to a shocked Rocket.

Suddenly realizing what had happened the group at the table quickly wrapped up their business and rushed in different directions. Quill just happened to rush past me, but before he could I managed to catch his arm. Looking around in confusion I asked, "Is this a part of the plan?

Quill glanced around at the room that seemed to have descended into some form of anarchy. He nodded with a wince, "Yeah…"

"This is a horrible plan." I stressed as armed guards began pouring into the room.

"Not the best, no." Quill agreed as I released his arm allowing him to go do whatever it was that he needed to. He started to leave only to hesitate for a moment about a foot away from me to call over the chaos one last piece of advice, "Try not to get killed!"

"Thank you, for your words of wisdom!" I shouted after him sarcastically as he sent me a thumbs-up. Suddenly angered I shouted after him over the crowd, "SUPER HELPFUL!"

Setting my hands on my hips I looked around again, the blue man had abandoned me at some point during the confusion and panicked prisoners who had no idea what was happening jumped around like startled sheep. Guards and robots loomed around shouting threats and orders over the madness sending some prisoners in hysteria. It was in that moment that I retracted my previous statement. Because not only was this the worst plan ever, this was also the real hell.


	5. Biggest Idiots in the Galaxy

Looking around at the madness that surrounded me my first instinct was the same as any other living creature who wished to stay alive; run for cover. This instinct turned into more of an urge when the flying robots suddenly descended and then fired upon Groot who still stood where he was with the battery in his hand. Then my urge disappeared and my instincts thrown out the metaphorical window when, for the first time that I had seen, Groot became angry. And as it turns out Groot had what I liked to call a 'Hulk mode', and thus began fearlessly punching robots out of the sky.

And I swore when he shouted 'I am Groot' at the robots I heard the true meaning behind the words, 'Groot smash'. Oh please let it be so! Anyways I now had the uncontrollable urge to go wild and break some stuff. And I had the perfect way to do so.

Now if you were paying attention I'm sure you remember me mentioning earlier that I went through some significant changes when I was sent so space, besides my hair turning white. If you were not then you might want to keep up, this is a little important. Perhaps I shall give a demonstration.

One of the robots seemed to have taken some interest in me, quickly it levels it's surprisingly cheap looking gun at me. And vaguely I noticed that somebody was shouting at me over the machines speakers trying to get me to move back to my cell. Smirking wickedly at it I cracked my knuckles. It was time to play.

Slowing my hands started to glow with an eerie blue smoky light that sort of began to curl around me when I first saw the light it reminded me of the tesseract. And that was what it all boiled down to. That stupid glow box had cursed me and caused my afterlife to be as messed up as it was. But at the same time I did have to thank it.

My streak started to glow as the voice on the speaker began to shutter nervously, encouraged by his fear I put my hands together before thrusting them forward sending a burst of electric blue energy at the robot. If I had used too little such a hit would do nothing to the machine, in fact, I believe it might actually power the device, only I had put a bit too much into the hit.

The overwhelmed machine began to squeak and beep frantically, broken chunks of dialog being mixed in as the machine had a meltdown before ultimately exploding in a dazzling light show.

I smirked victoriously lowering my hands turning to me left to find one of the inmates starting at me in terror. My smirk increased as I flashed my teeth and greeted, "Boo."

The big tough prisoner let out a terrified girlish shriek as he stumbled away from me, screaming about a monster, only to run right into a wall. Aw, the idiots of the universe amuse me so.

The guards continued to shout over the speakers, ordering the prisoners back to their cells. Though I don't know how they expected anyone to do this if they were shooting at everything that moved.

Setting my hands on my hips I once again began looking for the members of my group, Groot was easy to find mostly because he hadn't really moved at all. Only now he had a furry scarf on his shoulder-oh wait no. That was Rocket, trying to avoid the robots shooting.

"You!"

"GAH!" I shouted jumping a bit to turn to see a vaguely familiar face looming over me. I quickly recognized him as the blue shirtless guy from earlier, I was wondering where he had disappeared to. He looked down at me growling accusatorily, "You are part of the group?"

"Um… yes…?" I answered trying not to move away from the lumbering giant.

"Excellent." The man announced suddenly much more chipper as he leaned back to his full height, "We must assist the small furry one and the tree."

"Sure…?" I agreed not really sure how I should be responding to this guy. Was he a part of our group now? Why wasn't he wearing a shirt? Aw man, did we have to split the money six ways now?

Before I could ask him any of this questions, or you know his name, he seemed to decide that our conversation was over and began walking threateningly towards an armed group of guards coming in on the left. Glancing to my right I found the same.

"Looks like I got right." I decided hopefully picking up on what the blue man was saying. Either way it was time for my next trick.

I began focusing on one spot in the middle of the three guards, once I found the perfect spoke I smirked again and… well, it's kind of hard to explain. I just sort of mentally pushed myself forward, causing me to disappear and then reappear in the spot I had been focusing on in a flash of blue smoke.

Unsurprisingly I had the upper hand, with the guards begin focused on the vicious raccoon a wooden Hulk and all. Typically when I did training of combat I preferred to stay on the sidelines, firing from a distance with my sniper rifle and teleporting to different locations to get the shot I needed. But if I really did need to go into full combat mode I normally had my weapon of choice to go back on. Since I had neither of them with me I was forced to use my hand-to-hand to break some bones.

The second the world reappeared in my vision my elbow came up, slamming the guard next to me in the throat with a surprising amount of force. He flew back making strange choking sounds though I was pretty sure I hadn't broken his windpipe. The second one at least managed to turn to me before I quickly roadhouse kicking him in the chest sending him flying into his friend.

The last guard managed to actually aim at me, but sadly before he could fire I knocked his gun out of his hand, possibly breaking his wrist, and then took a cheap shot to the groin. As it turns out that hurt all species.

My next problem?

Avoiding Rocket's friendly fire.

I was looking down at the downed guards proudly for a moment with a satisfied smile on my face, only to glance to the side when I heard somebody screaming. I was totally calm for a second as I registered what exactly I was looking at when I did my eyes widened and I tensed up. It was only thanks to my abnormally fast reflexes that I managed to avoid getting shot in the head. I managed to leap behind one of the overturned metal tables, releasing a shrill surprised shriek as Rocket's bullets came alarmingly close to killing me.

Out of instinct, I covered my head waiting for his fire to pass as I bitterly cursed whoever gave him a weapon. Thankfully he seemed to be moving in a circle so the fire passed over me without much issue, allowing me to get up and find somebody who wasn't so trigger happy. Frowning in disappointed when I couldn't find Quill or Gamora I set my hand on my hips. I guess they might have taken cover as well to avoid Rocket's maniac shooting.

I became increasingly confused when people, more accurately guards, falling from the sky. Glancing up with mild interest I found Gamora on the upper floor totally kicked some serious butt, she totally reminded me of a less vengeful Natasha. Gamora was going through those guards like a knife through butter.

And speaking of guards, one of them was pointing a gun at my head.

I didn't bother looking to see who it was who was threatening my life, let alone what he might have been shouting at me. When he was in mid-shout I casually lifted on hand and flicked a finger at him sending a small burst of energy. Just enough to overload his brain and knock him out.

What was I supposed to be doing here again? Did I have a role in this, or did I just need to wait for the others to do their thing?

Realizing that I had some free time I decided to keep myself busy, but what could I do? It was then that a brilliant idea popped into my head, this was going to be amazing. Checking to make sure Rocket wasn't about to kill me by accident I bolted for the abandoned kitchen area.

I found the panel I needed with ease and I began expertly fiddling with the numerous brightly colored wires. No one seemed to care what I was doing and so no one tried to stop me. Probably because I was doing more good than bad at this point.

It's not like the kitchen was being put to good use.

"Phoenix, head for the watchtower!" Somebody shouted at me over the noise. Without looking up I waved at them dismissively, I was working it dang it! I was almost done, it could wait a moment whatever it was.

Once done and thoroughly satisfied with my work I rose to my feet and began looking for a way up to the watchtower. I spotted Gamora on the platform that lead to the entrance which gave me a place to port in. I think I might have scared Gamora though.

I had teleported in right next to her and when I appeared she sort of stumbled back startled. Mumbling a meek apology I looked over the railing to see Quill… holding a prosthetic leg? I really hope he didn't just randomly steal that from somebody.

I shook my head instead to solve the mystery of Quill's kleptomania later I began working on the panel on the watchtower doors. Wow, this stuff was so old! I mean not as old as the Walkman, but Nova really needed to get some upgrades in here! Third-graders could get this door open with a screwdriver if they wanted.

"What are you doing?"

I glanced over my shoulder to see Gamora looking down at me, having recovered from her little scare. Rolling my eyes I nodded towards the door in a 'duh' voice, "Opening the door? What else?"

Gamora decided not to bother me again as quickly the rest of our group had arrived on the platform, everyone was waiting on me. It only took another second for me to cheer victoriously and hop to my feet. Taking a step back I crossed my arms as the towers door seamlessly slid open revealing a single unarmed guard in the room.

He turned slowly to face us, gulping nervously as his eyes got impossible wide. Carefully he raised his hands in surrender, which we accepted by throwing him out of the tower. That was basically the same thing, right?

Wasting no time Rocket leaped at the controls, starting to work on something I didn't really feel the need to ask about. Instead all my attention was on the very obvious elephant in the room.

Quill.

More specifically the leg he was carrying.

It would seem that in the chaos of the prison Quill had decided that his best course of action was to take somebodies prosthetic leg. Was this some kind of sick joke that I was missing out on or was this guy a bigger jackass then I originally thought?

"Why is this one here?" Gamora demanded pulling me out of my thoughts, it only took me a moment to realize who she was talking about. And that would be the giant blue man.

"And do we have to share money with him?" I asked concerned my attention momentarily brought away from the leg.

"I promised he could stay by Gamora's side until he kills her boss. And I always keep my promises, especially when there to muscly whack jobs who will kill me if I don't," Quill explained helpfully somehow making all of that sound reasonable. Then as if he was just remembering he set the leg down next to Rocket and announced, "Here you go."

"Oh, I was just kidding about the leg." Rocket admitted with an amused laugh before gesturing at the two other devices the others had gathered, "I just needed these two things."

"What?!"

"Oh, and here I was thinking that you were just being a dick." I laughed patting the stunned Quill on the shoulder.

"I thought it be funny, wasn't it funny?" Rocket asked eagerly turning to face Quill, "What did he look like hopping around out there?"

"I had to transfer him 30 thousand units!" Quill exclaimed in disbelief. Rocket's only response was to turn back to what he had been doing snickering evilly. Then suddenly the tower shock as an explosion went off outside the tower. It took me a moment to realize what it was, when I did I began to chuckle darkly.

"What was that?" Gamora demanded.

"The kitchen just exploded!" Quill reported loudly as he looked out the window, trying to access the damage. My chuckling quickly turned into more of an evil laugh, which in turn caused everyone in the room to pause for a moment just to stare at me with looks of horror. Except for the big guy and Groot who seemed pretty okay with my pyromaniac actions.

Getting my laughter under control I shrugged in defense, "What? It's not like they were actually using it!"

"That's fair." Quill admitted nodding as the rest of the group seemed to be satisfied with my explanation. Everyone tensed up again when something besides the kitchen went boom.

"You have a plan right?" Quill shouted at Rocket sounding suspicious, "Or was that another thing you made up?"

"I have a plan, I have a plan!" The raccoon assured us as he worked on the controls.

Rolling my eyes I snapped a little annoyed, "Stop repeating yourself and do it man!"

"Silence your yammering and release us from this earthly confinement." The blue guy ordered sounding a little bored with us. Was he a Shakespeare fan or something?

"Yeah, I'm gonna have to agree with the walking thesaurus." Quill joked weakly as he glanced outside trying to lighten the mood.

He did the opposite of lighten the mood, as the blue man turned on Quill. Which left me in a very awkward position standing directly between the two of them. Thankfully the blue man was tall enough that he could glare over my head to growl threateningly, "Do not ever call me a thesaurus."

So, Shakespeare fan who couldn't take a joke.

"It's just a metaphor dude," Quill stated nervously, seeming to try to lower himself to hide behind me from the unamused giant.

"His people are completely literal." Rocket called from the control panel, "Metaphors are gonna go right over his head."

"Hey! Less talky more worky up there!" I snapped at the raccoon moving back so I wasn't stuck between Quill and the big guy. Quickly I began fiddling with the door controls, this whole thing was just taking way too long. And it would really suck if someone just opened the door and shoot us in the backs while we weren't looking.

I still almost found myself shouting in despair when I heard the blue literal man begin to describe how fast his reflexes where. And you know I think Gamora summed up our whole predicament quite nicely.

"I'm going to die surrounded by the biggest idiots in the galaxy."


	6. Behold

At least the guards seemed to be taking all this crap seriously, finally. I stood back up after I had sealed the doors shut taking a chance to glance out the windows to see what kind of chaos my kitchen exploded had caused. How much damage it had done, but I was distracted by the line of guards that had lined up. All of them dressed up in heavy duty armor and holding some impressively large guns.

"Those are some big guns," Quill announced sounding incredibly worried.

I also became worried when they fired for the first time, which I could only assume was a warning shot which caused the tower to shake. The force of the blast even caused the glass to start to crack.

"Rodent, we are ready to hear your plan!" Gamora shouted somehow managing to stay cool under pressure. Said rodent was still working on the control panel for the watchtower managing to keep his focus.

"Hold on!" Rocket shouted back with a bite in his voice, agitated with our lack of patience. That or he didn't like being called a rodent which as equally likely. I frowned as the guy below us gave the order for the next hit. With that warning, I managed to brace myself for the next hit which ended up causing the class by Quill to crack.

"I recognize this animal," The blue man realized completely off-topic, "We roast them over a flame as children. Your flesh is quite delicious."

"Oh, that's great! Do you happen to know if anyone else here is tasty!" I screamed sarcastically, the cracking glass sending me into a bit of panic.

"Not helping!" Rocket shouted sharply as another round went off again. This one made the building shake so violently I had to grab onto Quill just to steady myself. Quickly releasing him I struggled to think of a good plan, just to be safe. All of a sudden I heard one of the guards shouting abought firing all at once, on this was gonna be bad. Unless…

"Okay, well I'm hitting the deck. I will see you all in hell." I sang cheerily dropping to my knees so I could slide under the control table. The cover wasn't guaranteed to save me, but I had a higher chance this way. Once safely hiding I called one more, "It was nice knowing you all!"

Bracing myself for the final hit I covered my ears, ready for the final hit that I knew was coming. I felt the tower jerk and for a second I thought we were dead… except we hadn't been hit. Surprised I lurched forward to pull myself up over the console, resting on my knees I blinked out at the sight before me. Reluctantly I admitted, "That is clever."

"Thank you very much." Rocket nodded pleased, even puffing out his chest a bit.

"So, did you just cut the field generators completely or-," I began to ask as I looked over trying to see what exactly the raccoon had done on the console.

"Can you please do this later?" Quill snapped an edge of panic still evident in his voice.

"Shut up, Quill." I snapped back at him lightly, only half paying attention to the space pirate. I found it was hard to look away or focus on anything else besides the guards and a few prisoners floating around without any gravity to hold them down. I let out a breathless laugh as I watched guards and prisoners bump into each other, totally clueless as to what was happening.

The control room jerked a bit as it was separated from the rest of the tower, leaving us free to float just like the guards. It's a good thing I didn't get motion sick, otherwise I definitely would have puked.

The security robots, now under Rocket's control, suddenly came to life and began attaching themselves to the sides of the vessel. We now had a makeshift shuttle at our disposal.

Finally climbing back up onto my feet the pod began to move around heading for the bigger exit that we could fit through. As the pod began to twirl and clumsily make its way through the tunnels I began to think of it as a roller coaster. The movements pretty much matched. Which tempted me into throwing my arms up and shouting like I would if I found myself on one back home.

"Told you I had a plan." Rocket bragged smugly as we passed through the first door. No one had a chance to reply, though, as we began to bounce wildly off the walls like a giant game of ping-pong. On the way, we even managed to run into a couple of very confused guards, which was kind fun.

Crashing on the other hand, was definitely not fun.

Once our ride had come to a complete tongue, and we were free to speak without there being a chance of us biting off our own tongue, Peter admitted, "That was a pretty great plan."

"Yeah, great plan. Go team! But seriously, who wants to bust open a window? Or is it up to me?" I asked looking between the confused members of the group. As I tapped the glass I explained, "I may have totally sealed the doors shut. Like permanently.

"How did you even-! Never mind! I got it, just stand back, crazy girl." Quill announced quickly shaking his head and waving me away from the window. Mildly offended I took a step away from the glass, letting him move in so he could kick the already crumbling glass in. It wasn't the best exit, but thankfully the shoes seemed to be thick enough that the glass didn't embed itself in our feet.

Which meant our first stop was to head down to impound, where we could get all our stuff and get our ride and get out of here. As we searched through the rotating bins I may have been a little less gentle with the other inmates' possessions while looking for my stuff. I heard quite a few things in those bins and some things breaking. But it's not like they were gonna use it, right?

"Phoenix, you're bins over here," Gamora called suddenly as I carelessly throw yet another bin back into its place.

"Oh, thank you!" I gasped too excited to care about whatever had shattered in the big. Mindlessly knocking over a pile of bins I snatched mine up from Gamora's hands, setting it down on the ground I threw it open. Smiling happily down at my material possessions I sighed, "My babies, come to mommy!"

Like a worried parent I began checking my stuff over, ensuring that no foolish guards had tried messing with any of my precious techs. All the while I will admit I was talking to my stuff, but can you really blame me? Sure it sounded insane, but when I was a kid the only real friend I had was literally a robot that was my house. I almost shrieked in joy when I found my HTW at the bottom of the bin, flipping it over in a mad panic.

The breath I was holding rushed from my lungs as my fingers ran over my mother's necklace, safe and sound and totally unharmed.

"Alright, I am good to go!" I announced as I attached the device to my wrist and then throwing my bag over my shoulder.

"Get my ship!" Quill called pointing out the window as I threw my clothes over my arm, "It's the Milano!"

Moving next to him I looked out the window frowning, "Where?"

"Orange and blue, in the corner. See it?"

"Got it!" I confirmed as Quill turned back to his own bin gathering up his own stuff.

"They crumpled my pants up into a ball!" Rocket shouted insulted as we began to rush from the room, "That's rude they folded yours!"

"You can leave a complaint later!" I promised sarcastically running down the halls ahead of him towards the hanger. Since I knew what Quill's ship looked like it was easy to find, there weren't many custom paint jobs around here. Although, I do have to admit that I the mechanic in me was little bit impressed by the ship.

She was a beauty, and going off the facts in my head I knew it was an amazing ship to have. It could go remarkably fast in a short amount of time and lasted for a long time.

Note to self: Buy Milano with orb money.

The guards, as I have already mentioned, were not the brightest in the galaxy. Meaning they had set up every ship so anyone could basically walked into any ship of their choice and fly far away. There wasn't even a tracker on the ship, they literally left the keys in the ignition.

It was when I entered the wonderful ship that I discovered of the true meaning of a bachelor pad. The glorious ship had been besmirched by garbage and spare parts that litter the ground and ever surface.

I forced myself not to think too much on it though, after all the careless guards could have had a party in here or something stupid like that. Before my theory was thrown out the window by logic I made my way to the nearest bathroom. Everyone else chose to change in the open, I guess.

Once done I found that I was the first on done, so I made my way back to the flight deck. Just as I set my hand on the steering controls somebody else did too. My head snapped to the side to see the smaller Rocket looking at me with confusion.

"What are you doing?" He demanded sounding offended.

"What are you doing?" I parroted with much more bite in my voice.

Rocket swallowed nervously glancing around the room. "Um, driving the ship…?"

"Um, no. No you are not. I am driving the ship!" I snapped now majorly ticked off.

"Do you even known how to drive kid?" Rocket countered without thinking.

There was a moment of total silence. Groot's jaw dropped and he reached up a hand to cover it, Gamora and Drax watched the two of us with interest. One to see if they needed to break up the fight, the other to see if they could watch someone die.

It personally took all the willpower I possessed not to pick him up by his fuzzy tail and thrown him through the window. It took a lot of effort and my face went completely blank.

"Let go of the steering." I ordered in a slow even voice, leaving no room for argument. The edge of unadulterated rage that bubbled just beneath the surface of my voice was enough to get Rocket to back up. As he stepped away he lifted both hands/paws in surrender.

Without looking at him I slipped into the seat and began powering up the ship.

"I guess I'll just take copilot then." Rocket annoyed hesitantly, as if he was checking to make sure it was okay with me.

A secret smirk made my lips twitch at the raccoon's sudden change of mood. As the engines began to power up I took a deep calming breath. My eyes closed. And then I realized it.

"Where the hell is Quill?"

"He said to keep the Milano close." Gamora revealed as she took her seat, clutching a bag of some kind close. Probably held the orb.

"He-he said what? Oh for the love of-! I am going to kill him." I groaned slouching down in my seat for a moment running a hand down my face. Straightening up I began setting up the ship to take off. "Let's hope Quill can reach us in deep space."

Unsurprisingly we flew out of the prison with absolutely no problem. It was almost like they had never prepared for prisoners to actually get this far. Their arrogance seemed to be their undoing it. I even waved to a couple of guards on the ground as we flew past. They looked over at one another debating on what they should do before they shrugged and waved back.

Now out in deep space, it was a waiting game. Whatever Quill was wasting time doing I hope it was pretty frickin' important.

"How's he gonna get to us?" Rocket shouted impatiently after only a couple minutes of waiting.

"He declined to share that information with me." Gamora said grumpily.

"Well screw this then!" Rocket yelled, "I'm not waiting around for some humi with a death wish."

"Well only twenty hours in and we're already abandoning people. Big surprise." I sighed sarcastically as I began to check my nails.

"You got the orb, right?" Rocket asked turning back to Gamora hopefully. The green woman agreed

With that being said Gamora finally felt the need to check to see if she did actually have a bag, I could hear her rummaging through it. It continued for a little while until I heard her curse viciously under her breath. I casually began fixing my cuticles as I guessed, "So, the thief took the orb. Didn't he?"

"Oh, you got to be frickin kidding me!"

"I am Groot!"

"That clever devious son of a bitch. He's smarter then I gave him credit for." I growled angrily under my breath as I leaned back into the seat. "I swear if he went back for that damn Walkman I will throw him out the airlock myself."

And so that is the story of how we were forced to wait impatiently for a wannabee Hans Solo with a death wish. Him and his precious piece of dinosaur tech that I will be dismantling as soon as he got on board.

With nothing to do I went back to fixing my nails, after setting up HTW to run a search on Groot. Seriously, the curiosity was killing me. I really did have to know what the heck he was and there was really no way to ask someone that politely. Besides I can probably guess what he would say.

"Behold."

I looked up surprised as the blue man announced. Oh, I had finally learned his name. It was Drax.

Funny story when I asked him who he was, after he questioned me for a bit about my hair, he stood up to his full height and shouted his name. To be more exact he shouted, and I quote, "I am Drax the Destroyer, slayer of Ronan's minions. I shall claim his head!"

Naturally we needed more crazy people around here.

Anyways, I looked out the window to see what exactly Drax was 'beholding'. Floating out there using what appeared to be rocket shoes was Quill.

"Before he gets on, he is not allowed alone with that orb until we are paid. Thoughts?"

"Agreed."


	7. Jackson Palmer Walls

After all the crap we had gone through to get out of jail Quill decided it was worth potentially throwing all of our hard work out the window. Just so he could get that stupid Walkman. At least Drax had given me a new word to describe Quill, imbecile. Honestly I was a little disappointed that I hadn't thought of it myself actually. Two dull hours later we had done nothing. I was spending my time going through my junk messages that had piled up when I was in jail.

God that was going to be on my recorder forever wasn't it?

Everyone was a little on edge, nobody really trusted each other so we mostly kept to ourselves. I glanced up again to see Rocket still tearing stuff apart. He might be building a bomb, I am 89% sure that he was building a bomb.

"Wow, wow, wow! Yo!" Quill shouted when he finally noticed the raccoon was tearing apart the ship, even though he had been doing it for about an hour or so. Quill rushed over to Rocket yanking stuff out of Rocket's hands stopping him from doing any more damage to his bachelor pad as he demanded, "Ranger Rick, what are you doing?! You can't take apart my ship without asking me!"

"Who the hell is Ranger Rick?" I scoffed not picking up the reference, it sounded a little familiar but I was mostly drawing a blank. I apologize to anyone who is insulted by my lack of knowledge on rangers.

"What is this?" Quill demanded ignoring my comment reaching down to touch the mess of tech that had once been part of his ship.

"Don't touch that," Rocket warned him before he could touch him, "It's a bomb."

"A bomb?!"

"Call it!" I announced proudly raising my hand as I leaned against the wall.

"And you leave it lying around?" Quill yelled at the raccoon, choosing to ignore me again.

"I was gonna put it in a box!" Rocket defended himself looking around the area he had set up absentmindedly going through the drawers. Something in one of them caught my attention, even from here I could see wrapping paper with a bow and everything. I wonder whose birthday it was.

"What's a box gonna do?" Quill demanded in a moment of intelligence.

I shrugged my shoulder admitting with my eyes still on the box, "Depends on the box really."

"How 'bout this one?" Rocket wondered as he picked up the very present I had just been looking at.

At the sight of someone touching the present seemed to send Quill into a rage. He slammed the present of the raccoons hand and slammed the door shut yelling, "Hey! Leave that alone!"

"Why? What it is?" Rocket asked trying to be reasonable.

"Shut up!" Quill ordered firmly, being a total jerk about it.

"Well ya don't have to be mean about it," I snapped at him shooting him a heated glare before my attention was drawn back to my holographic display. Quill went on to asked Rocket about yet another machine that had been built in the past hour.

"That's for when things get really hardcore," Rocket explained with an edge of giddiness in his voice, sounding pleased with himself as he went on, "Or if you wanna blow up moons."

I blinked looking up to stare at the raccoon who seemed unaware of my stare. This one, I decided. I will be best friends with this one.

"No one's blowing up moons," Gamora announced shooting down the idea before it could even reach the launch pad.

"AW!" I whined disappointed slouching my shoulders in despair, I wanted to blow up a moon! Gamora rolled her eyes at me clearly unimpressed with my eagerness to destroy a moon.

"Listen I'm gonna need your buyers coordinates," Quill announced finally getting a chance to ask. Until this point we had just picked a random direction and had gone that way. It wasn't the best method but it worked.

"We're heading in the right direction," Gamora offered as she spun the orb around in her hand, "For now."

"Great, super helpful once again." I noted looking up at them both with disdain, after all they both spoiled my fun.

"If we're gonna work together you might wanna trust me," Quill informed the green woman eyeing the orb suspiciously.

"Like that's gonna happen," I scoffed rolling my eyes at his ridiculous suggestion. As far as I was concerned I was the only law abiding citizen here, and therefore I was the only trustworthy one here.

Quill glanced back at me with an annoyed look, I only shrugged at him in response. He turned back to Gamora taking the orb from her holding it up as he admitted, "I'd trust you a lot more if you told me what this is."

"My guess is it's a weapon," I chimed in eagerly pulling up my scanner that had the reading I had taken of the orb. I checked it over again as I announced, "I'm mostly getting some energy readings from it, some pretty high ones too."

"I don't know what it is." Gamora insisted in response leaning on the table that Quill set down the orb. Drax moved in quickly snatching up the orb examining it eagerly.

"If it is a weapon we should us it against Ronan," He announced eagerly.

I suddenly became worried holding up my hand and calling worriedly, "Whoa! Hold on! Don't touch it!"

"Put it down you fool! You'll destroy us all!" Gamora shouted at him, thankfully as concerned as I was with that thing going boom. For all I knew it was a giant bomb about to go off.

"Or just you murderess!" Drax shouted back, Gamora took instant offense and moved right up into Drax's face.

"I let you live one princess!"

"I AM NOT A RPINCESS!"

"Fight! Fight! Fight!" I shouted egging them on as I pulled up my recording device, ready to see a battle royal.

"HEY!" Quill shouted before there could be blood, I sent a suspicious look his way. He was about to kill the fun wasn't he? No sooner had I said this that he announced, "Nobody is killing anybody on my ship!"

Eyes were now on Quill, it was after all his ship. He sent a heated look towards all of us until he settled an accursedly one at me pointing at me, "And you! Stop encouraging them!"

"I'm not encouraging anything!" I defended quickly holding up one hand in surrender. Quill only narrowed his eyes at me. I groaned shutting off the recording crossing my arms and leaning against the wall with a bitter mutter, "Kill joy."

Satisfied that I wasn't recording the going on Quill turned his attention back to the whole group, "We're stuck together. Until we get the money!"

"I have no interest in money!" Drax snapped dismissively carelessly tossing the orb to Quill before he left the room.

"More for us," I sighed shrugging my shoulders as he left the room.

"Partners," Quill agreed looking around at all of us.

"We have an agreement, but I would never be partners with the likes of you," Gamora corrected him, I barely managed to stop myself from shouting burn as I pulled up my HWT again. She continued to explain, "I'll tell the buyer we're on our way. And Quill, you're ship is filthy."

With that being said Gamora took her leave, and I definitely had to agree with her. The ship was totally gross.

"She has no idea," Peter began once Gamora was gone. He looked around at the walls with a look of pride, "If I had a black light…"

My fingers stopped moving completely and I came to a complete stop. Dreading what he was about to say.

"This place would look like a Jackson Palmer painting."

I dropped my arm, remaining a still as I could allowing that thought to sink in properly thinking of the painting and why that would matter. My eyes widened as I realized exactly what he meant by that statement.

"OH MY GOD!" I shouted jumping away from the walls and began frantically brushing off my clothes as if that would get anything off me as I gasped panicked, "Oh sweet Odin's throne-by the nine realms! Son of a hairless frost giant! WHY!?"

I looked back as Quill began laughing hysterically apparently finding my reaction hilarious.

"What is wrong with you?" I shouted at him glaring dangerously even as he struggled to contain his laughter. I pointed at him narrowing my eyes as a threatened loudly, "Keep laughing buddy; because you won't be when I stick you too the wall so you can watch me dismantle that damn Walkman, recreate it into a flamethrower and burn your stupid tapes!"

Quill immediately shut up, the situation now not a funny as he had originally thought, for good measure he set one hand over where the device was kept on his belt as an extra precaution.

I took a deep breath, confident that the message had been received before I announced, "I am going up to the cockpit. Unless that also looks like a Palmer painting?"

"No, no, that's clear!" Quill assured me.

"It better be!" I snapped as I headed up the steps snatching up the orb as I went, not confident enough to leave it with Quill, Rocket or Groot. I glanced towards Gamora who had taken the first chair she had run into.

I made my way to the pilots chair setting myself down, and then I just looked up out the window. Out at the stars that seemed to stretch on endlessly. It was a whole new sight to me. I was used to growing up in cities, and when I wasn't in cities I was being rushed around. So I never did get to see the stars.

Except now it seemed everywhere I went I could look up at the sky and see all the stars I wanted.

I had always loved stars, even though I couldn't ever see them. Peter, my Peter, could tell you how much I loved them by all the astrology books I made him carry whenever we stopped at the library.

Peter.

I tried not to think too much about him, but sometimes he would sneak up on my thoughts and knock me over. I missed him, I missed his awkward little smile he'd send my way whenever I said something clever, and I missed his adorable shuttering and the way his nose would wrinkle up when he wasn't quite sure that to say.

Sometimes I liked wondering how he would respond to all of this.

I think actually he would just follow around with me, only caring that we were together. It seemed that's how he handled most situations, as long as he had my back and he had mine we would be fine.

What would dad think of this?

What a pointless question that was. How the hell was I supposed to know something like that? I couldn't even think what dad's favorite color was! I didn't even know who my own father was, all I knew was a playboy who I would stand next to sometimes in front of cameras.

I'm not saying Tony Stark was a bad father but… well he never really did fit in being a parent into his very busy schedule of being a party animal, or a smart ass, or a playboy. At least I could name his favorite alcoholic drink.

But then a couple years ago he changed his ways, he became Iron Man. But the damage had already been done to our relationship. I took comfort that I was at least being ignored for something a bit more worthwhile than party.

I wonder how they were handling it, my death that is. I hope they're okay, dad barely survived mom's death. Hopefully JARVIS will help him through it at least. I hope nobody blamed themselves.

It made the choice to endanger myself, and I was glade to do it. I just hope it wasn't for nothing.

I shook myself from those thoughts, as there was no point to dwell on that kind of stuff not now.

Instead I held up the orb flipping it around in my hand. Since I had first come into contact with it I had felt this familiar, almost hum that came from it. A certain level of energy that was both foreign and extremely familiar. But what on earth could it be? What was in this stupid little orb and why did everyone want it so badly?


	8. Bar Fight on Knowhere

By my estimate it took us a little over five hours to reach Gamora's buyer coordinates, but really who was counting? Me, I was; but you could hardly blame me. I had spent the five hour ride settled in the captain's chair, curiosity got the best of me about two hours in which led me to check my HWT to find planets we were in route to arrive at. It seemed that every time I found one though Gamora would appear in all her green glory and have me turn the ship in a very specific direction. She wouldn't even give me an ETA when I asked her. It was driving me insane!

At the very least I had made some process on uncovering the mystery that was Groot. And after multiple failed searches I had finally found a solid lead.

Groot, or rather his species, was known as a 'Flora Colossus' from a planet only known as X.

In other words Groot was a giant flora; that was the literal translation.

So naturally I absolutely had to know more about them. I set up a search on everything on the Flora Colossus, which left me to search on more information about the orb. Most of what I found seemed more like conspiracy theories, so most weren't actually leads. It was frustrating to say the least, I mean come on it was a metal orb!

The only special thing about it was the hum, and even that I was pretty sure that was my imagination running wild again!

Eventually I did migrate back downstairs, the chair was comfy but not if you sit in it for hours. I wondered if this was what road trips were like, whoa I dodge a bullet.

It took some convincing on the behalf of Quill to finally get me downstairs. That and a promise, sworn on the oh so important Walkman, that not everything downstairs was gross and that all his chairs were safe to sit on… except one that he would be moving away.

Rocket seemed incredibly pleased when I finally allowed him to take the wheel, his smug little smile agitated me. I made sure he knew that the only reason he was driving was because I was hungry!

I didn't know where Gamora and Drax had managed to hide themselves away to, it wasn't that big of a ship, but I found Quill easy enough. Playing with my sniper rifle.

"AH! What are you doing?" I cried out surging forward, the sight of my baby in Quill's hands sent me into panic mode. I pulled it away from him hugging the rifle to my chest protectively and glaring dangerously at Quill.

"Oh relax, I was just trying to figure out how the heck you shoot it," Quill announced sounding unbelievably frustrated as he practically glared at the device in my arms throwing up his arms as he demanded baffled, "How the heck do you reload it?!"

I smirked at his frustration a little pleased with myself for being able to drive Quill mad, "I don't have to. Its powered by… well me. I don't need rounds which saves time."

"Yeah, the weird glowy stuff in the Kyln." Quill realized nodding now a little pacified… well mostly. He turned away from me, while at the same time shooting badly hidden glances my way. The silent question that he was without a doubt asking couldn't be cleared even if he screamed at me.

"Weird glowy stuff? Haven't heard that one yet." I admitted slightly amused by Quill's wording. I hesitated for a moment deciding on whether or not to answer the silent question. In the end I decided not to open that can of worms today, instead remaining silent as I put away my rifle.

Quill sighed realizing that I wouldn't be sharing any of that backstory with him. He instead pointed me towards the kitchen, offering anything edible I could find, before he headed to check his own guns.

He seemed deadest on avoiding silence though because he set up his tape to play while he worked. I will say that I was a little happy to hear the song Cherry Bomb, not that I would ever admit that out loud.

A little over an hour later Rocket called us up to the cockpit, announcing that there was a planet inbound. I had expected a simple planet, so I was incredibly surprised when I saw the planet.

Even you would be shocked if you found a giant decapitated head the size of Jupiter floating around in space!

"Whoa…" Quill gasped as amazed as I was.

Drax was the one to ask the big question, "What is it?"

"It's called Knowhere," Gamora explained, "The severed head of an ancient celestial being."

"I want one." I whispered my eyes wide as I announced, "Are there more? Can I buy one? I'm buying one."

"Be wary heading in rodent, there are no regulations whatsoever here," Gamora warned Rocket ignoring me once again.

I practically pressed my face against the glass as we rode in, flying in through what had once been the eye of this giant guy, or girl I guess, arriving in were the brain probably was. This was so cool.

Once we landed Gamora decided to fill us in on why there were people basically living in somebodies head, "Hundreds of years ago, the Tivan group sent workers in to mind the organic matter in the skull. Brain tissue, spinal fluid, all rare resources. Highly valued in black markets across the galaxy."

"Gross…" I commented as we walked through the dirty streets, "But still totally awesome."

"It's dangerous and illegal work," Gamora informed me, "Only suitable for outlaws."

"Well I come from a planet of outlaws," Quill bragged proudly as if we had great thieves on earth, "Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, John Stamos."

"John Stamos?" I demanded frowning confused. The only John Stamos I knew was the guy from the old TV show Full House.

"Sounds like a place which I would like to visit," Drax decided convinced by Quill's not so impressive list.

"You should," Quill agreed proudly.

I rolled my eyes at this, it's not like Earth was that great. Last I saw it was boring unless it was in danger of being destroyed or enslaved. I kept my hand in my pocket still looking up at the whole area, Groot fell into place next to me.

My gaze was returned to the area around us when Quill suddenly warned us to watch our wallets as a small group of children swarmed us all asking for units. I slowed to a stop when Groot suddenly did something incredibly unexpected.

One of the kids, a little girl with long blond hair, stopped in front of him. Groot smiled sweetly kneeling down and hoping his hand, I watched in amazement as a small white flower grew from his hands. He plucked it from his hand and handed it to the little girl who responded with a small smile. It warmed my cold heart just a tiny bit, the scene was sweet enough to give me the warm-fuzzies.

Groot moved back to his feet as we continued on after the group who seemed to have missed Groot's caring actions. I think Groot had just become my favorite.

I stopped when I found were we were going.

"Your buyers in there?" Rocket demanded eyeing the bar with disbelief. The warm-fuzzy feeling left being replaced by a sense of loathing, the same I would get whenever I saw a bar or a drink. It was an unconscious thing, something I couldn't stop myself from doing.

I hated alcohol. Hated it with a dying passion, and now it looked like I would be stuck in a bar. Just what I needed.

We are to wait here for his representative," Gamora informed us calmly as if there was no problem with it.

"This is no respectable establishment," Drax noted suspiciously, "What do you expect us to do while we wait?"

I sighed disappointedly, "It's called alcohol."

I almost talked myself into not going into the bar, finding somewhere else to hang out except I dismissed this thought. These guys were criminals, which meant they would probably have no problem ditching me and taking my share. So I sucked it up and followed them into the bar.

Once inside everyone seemed to split up into different areas. Rocket, Groot, and Drax settled themselves around a game table where they basically watched a rat style murder. Well they were really weird creatures that reminded me of rats. I decided to stay away from that table, I don't know how Groot managed to watch it; I had always been fond of animals even though I was mostly a computer child. Still I couldn't bear to watch as smaller rats were viciously and mercilessly eaten by a much bigger opponent.

They never even had a chance.

Quill risked getting cut out by heading out to buy gas for the Milano and Gamora settled herself down on the balcony.

I found a quiet, well mostly quiet, area that seemed to be ignored by the drunk people. There wasn't any chairs so I curled up against the wall content to pretend I was somewhere else as I played on my HWT. I looked up when Quill reentered the bar, he spotted me waving hesitantly. I gave him an annoyed look and instead pointed him towards were Gamora had disappeared too.

The sexual tension between the two was seriously getting annoying.

It worked for a while until somebody screamed and I looked up just in time to see Groot tackle Drax sending them rolling over the game table.

I was interested in what had started the fight, if I had to guess though I would say the alcohol loosened somebodies tongue and somebody took offense. I jumped to my feet with a startled shout, "Shit!"

I rushed to them as I spotted Rocket pulling out his gun, apparently about to shoot Drax, since I highly doubted Groot had done anything to cause such anger.

I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to do in this situation, having actively avoided alcohol for most of my life meant I had never experience a bar fight. And even then I doubt it would prepare me for a bar fight between two very big opponents, both of which could probably break me in half if they wanted to. That being said as I passed the balcony exit I shouted to the two down there, "Hey lovebirds! We got trouble!"

I didn't wait for a response instead taking a moment to debate my options, I will did not want to get in between Drax and Groot. Luckily though there was someone smaller than me involved in this fight, but he was also the one holding the gun.

"Rocket, hey! Knock it off!" I shouted as I rushed towards him holding my hands up as if that would stop him from shooting me. Grateful that out of the corner of my eye I could see Gamora having joined the party, bravely holding the raging Drax back. Quill appeared next to me holding up his hands.

"Whoa, whoa!" Quill shouted focusing on the drunk raccoon who was still swaying unsteadily on his feet, "What are you doing?"

"This vermin speaks of affairs he knowns nothing about!" Drax shouted accursedly at the raccoon.

"That is true!" Rocket confirmed with hesitation.

"He has no respect!"

"That is also true!"

"Great! Now would all you drunk idiots just calm down? Come on!" I shouted at the two of them waiting for somebody to move so I could blast them. At least Groot seemed calm now, if I had to guess he just jumped to defend Rocket and wasn't actually involved in the argument.

"Keep calling me vermin, tough guy!" Rocket challenged the blue man fearlessly ignoring my request, "You just wanna laugh at me like everyone else!"

"Rocket, you're drunk." Quill tried to reason with the smallest of the group keeping his voice as steady as he could, "Okay? Nobody's laughing at you!"

"He thinks I'm some stupid thing! He does!" Rocket insisted the alcohol making it difficult to come up with actual thing to say. Before I could respond, or disarm him, he shouted again, "Well, I didn't ask to be made! I didn't ask to be torn apart and put back together over and over and turned into… some little monster!"

"Come on Rocket, you're not a monster!" I insisted trying to help drawing from the limited amount of interaction I had had with Dr. Banner, "And no one here called ya one!"

Rocket leaped at the opportunity to correct me pointing at Drax and Gamora as he announced, "He called me 'vermin'! She called me 'rodent'!"

I sent an annoyed glare back at them, silently blaming them for the emotional fallout we were now dealing with. I swore I almost saw a look of guilt flash in Gamora's eyes, but it was gone almost as soon as I had seen it. Honestly as far as I was concerned she should feel guilty.

Rocket took a breath before suddenly lifting up his gun clumsily aiming towards the two offenders as he shouted, "Let's see if you can laugh after five or six good shots to your FRICKIN' FACE!"

"WHOA! HOLD ON!" I shouted not a little panicked, because that clumsy aim almost seemed to be pointed towards me a bit.

Quill decided to be reckless and jumped in front of the raccoon, making him a perfect target to be blasted in the face, as he held up his hands shouting urgently, "No, no, no, no! 5 billion units! Rocket, come on man!"

"Of course money will save us," I sighed rolling my eyes at the ridiculousness.

"Hey! Suck it up for one more lousy night and you're rich!" Quill continued to persuade the raccoon with the only thing that seemed to work. While I can't say it did much in the way of comforting the distressed coon, but it seemed to give Rocket a reason not to kill us all. For one tense moment Rocket said nothing, until he lowered his gun glaring at the gun with a hard look.

He sighed in a defeated sort of way, "Fine. But I can't promise when this is all over I'm not gonna kill every last one of you jerks."

"See? That's exactly why non you have any friends!" Quill shouted angrily looking back at Gamora and Drax, "Five seconds after meeting someone you're already trying to kill them!"

"It's much better to just skip the meeting part, isn't it?" I snapped accursedly glaring Quill down as I crossed my arms. I haven't forgiving him completely for knocking me off the balcony, sue me.

"We have travelled half way across the quadrant and Ronan is no closer to being dead!" Drax announced sound tired as he voiced his complaint. With that said the big blue man turned and fled the bar dejectedly.

"Drax!" Quill called after him trying to call him back.

"Let him go." Gamora insisted stopping from going after the destroyed, "We don't need him."

"If he kills anyone I get to blame you," I informed her a little agitated that we had brought a convicted killer to a bar, let him get drunk, and then just sent him on his way. Somebody was going to be missing a spine before the night was out.

"My lady Gamora,"

I turned surprised by this new voice, I found that while we were busy a door had opened. A girl with pink skin and brown hair had appeared wearing a white dress standing perfectly still with her hands together as she announced, "I am here to fetch you for my master."


	9. Pink Chick with a Bomb

Whatever I had been expecting when we walked into the bar, it was definitely not what I found when we were lead into the room. It was like a weird twisted combination of a zoo and a museum, the glass gases housing every kind of creature or thing imaginable. The room seemed endless from where we walked in, with cases going up into the sky. It was unnerving.

"Okay this isn't creepy at all," Rocket summed it up, his voice still revealing just how drunk he really was. Although to his credit he seemed to be sobering up fairly quickly, not willing to take chances though I walked next to him. Slowing my pace greatly so I could get his gun away from him at a moment's notice in case he decided to start shooting.

"We house the galaxies largest collection of fauna, relics, and species of all manor." The attendant explained, but it sounded rehearsed. I wonder how many times she had to say that line.

I blinked surprised when I heard a low growling coming from my right, I turned to see they had one of those dogs we had foolishly decided to send up into space… well I guess that's where they went. I wonder if they had any monkeys. I looked down curiously when I heard another growl. I was more than a little surprised to find that Rocket had taken offense to the dog and was growling back.

"Dude," I hissed at him putting my hand on my hip as I shot him a look of disbelief.

"What? He started it!" Rocket defended in disbelief, surprised that I would blame him.

"I don't care who stared it. Just knock it off, we got enough problems." I reminded him turning back to look towards were we were walking.

The attendant forced a meak smile as she announced dramatically, "I present to you, Taneleer Tivan. The Collector."

The man was weird. And that was me being kind in describing him, I couldn't tell what kind of animal made the belt that he wore like a cape but I have no doubt it was probably a rare species or something. He also had some weird glass, they didn't look stylish or comfortable so I can only assume they had some kind of purpose to them.

I forced myself to look somewhere else, reminding myself that this guy was going to be paying us a lot of money and it was best not to give him a reason not to. I looked over the cages when suddenly movement in one of them caught my attention. My eyes widened a little at the sight of a chitauri in one of the cages.

It looked exactly like the ones who attacked New York, and so I couldn't help getting a good look at it as I didn't get a chance to when I helped defend the city.

"What is that… thing?"

I looked back towards the Collector, I guess, who had suddenly become very interest in Groot.

"I am Groot."

I glanced back down at Rocket to see him glaring supeciously at the Collector, ready to jump to the tree man's aid if the collector got too close.

"I never thought I'd meet a Groot," the Collector admitted with a little bit of excitement in his voice as he looked Groot up and down, "Sir, you must allow me to pay you now so that I may own your carcass. At the moment of your death of course."

"Well this certainly took a turn," I admitted looking around the group to see if anyone else was as concerned as I was.

The Flora Colossus in question didn't seemed worried though. In fact he shrugged casually as he, "I am Groot."

Whatever Groot response wasn't what Rocket had been expecting because the drunk raccoon looked up at him in disbelief as he demanded, "Why? So he could turn you into a frickin' chair?"

"That's your pet?" The Collector asked carelessly nodding towards Rocket.

"_His what_?!" Rocket snarled already reaching back for his gun.

I moved before then holding one hand out towards the coon as I addressed the odd man a little nervous, "No, no! You really should not be making jokes at him right now! He's an angry drunk! And I think he might actually kill us all."

Instead of responding immediately the Collector began eyeing me curiously, his eyes going towards my streak. I resisted the urge to squirm under his gaze as he asked casually, "This is an exciting day for me, two rare species in one day."

"Uh, I wouldn't really consider myself rare," I admitted suspiciously looking around for help.

"Tivan!" Gamora interrupted coming to my rescue as she stepped in front of the psycho skillfully getting the conversation back on track, "We have been halfway around the galaxy to get this orb."

"Very well then," Tivan agreed reluctantly dropping the previous topic going back towards his new toy, "Let us see what you brought."

I looked around the group realizing suddenly that I didn't know who had the orb, I really hope it wasn't Drax. I found my eyes fall on Quill as he pulled out the orb, trying to look cool… until he dropped it. I sighed pinching the bridge of my nose as he scrambled to recover from his actions. At least this explained why he was willing to risk being ditched, after all once we realized he had the orb we wouldn't have gone anywhere.

And here I thought we had agreed not to let him have the orb.

Tivan eagerly took the orb from Quill carrying it to his table so he could admire it properly. Setting the orb down he quickly began a story, "Oh my new friends. Before creation itself, there were six singularities."

A switch was flipped and suddenly a machine hummed and began twisting the orb expertly until it opened, finally revealing what it was that made that damn thing so important. In the center of the orb there was a single purple, glowing, stone. And I found that the hum I had been easy to ignore increased tenfold. But how did I remember it?

Something else was turned on as a number of holographic images appeared around us revealing different photos and videos. I tried to listen to Tivan's speaking but I found myself too focused on the images to care.

Especially when I spotted one of them.

The familiar hum, it all clicked into place the second I laid eyes on the so familiar alien power source that almost caused the destruction of New York City. The Tesseract.

I knew more about that cube than almost anyone, during my training into SHIELD I had been working on the Tesseract with Erik. I had been there when the psycho power hungry Loki came through, and that action alone had nearly killed me.

I could distinctly remember standing on the other edge of the device, in the wrong place at the right time. While I had not actually touched the cube directly, when the portal had opened I couldn't dodge out of the way fast enough. The beam had knocked me out cold for a good minute or so.

The doctors who I saw claimed that no permanent damage had been done but now I see that it was mostly the cause of my messed up afterlife. This was way worst then I thought.

"Blah, blah, blah!" Rocket suddenly dismissed his voice now mostly sober as he yelled in annoyance, "We're all very fascinated whitey! But we'd like to get paid!"

I rolled my eyes at Rocket's impatience not very amused myself.

"How would you like to get paid?" The Collector asked sounding generally curious.

Rocket only got more annoyed at the Collectors cluelessness shouting annoyed, "What do you think fancy pants? Units!"

I sighed following the rest of the group, watching the Collector as he began shifting threw a drawer to find our payment. He suddenly looked up, eyes widening just a bit. Before I could ask him what was wrong he suddenly snapped warningly, "Carina! Get away from that!"

I spun quickly on my heels eyes widened as well, the attendant who had led us in glared at her boss with such hatred I've no doubt she despised him. Defiantly she shouted at him, "I will no longer be your slave!"

Suddenly realizing what she was about to do I held out my hand shouting panicked, "DON'T!"

But she had already made up her mind and with no hesitation, clearly deeming that risking death was worth destroying the Collector and us alone with him, she grabbed the stone in one hand.

And that was when she started screaming as her pink skin cracked and broke revealing glowing lines of purple and black.

"Holy-!"

The initial blast was strong enough to knock me clear off my feet, but almost as soon as my back hit the ground I was leaping to my feet. I glanced around the room before I made a quick decision, I couldn't run fast enough to get away so instead I choose to dive behind the desk that Gamora and Quill had found.

I can't say where Rocket or Groot were, but if I had to guess I would say they were trying to out run the blast. The attendants shrill screams echoed around the room as the energy consumed her, I didn't dare to look up and see for myself. Unwilling to listen to the dying girls screams I covered my ears, the energy of the stone made my ears pop like I was on a plane. I squeezed my eyes shut desperately trying to block it out.

I didn't fight when I felt somebody grab me yanking me towards them, I took a chance to glance and see that Gamora, Quill and I were now huddled together behind the desk waiting out the explosion.

It was even worse when the screaming stopped, because that was when I knew that she had been completely absorbed. That was also when she went bang. The explosion seemed to shake the building, and the light that was produced by the blast was so bright I could see it even with my eyes squeezed shut.

My brain instantly flipped to trying calculating out chances of surviving the blast, until the ground stopped shaking and the room calmed. I found that somebody, Quill I realized, had thrown his arms around Gamora to clutch my arm. I shifted a bit couching a bit as we moved away from one another too terrified to be embarssed.

We looked at one another before slowly we all sat up so we could look over the top of the desk. As expected the room had been totally destroyed, with the single small stone responsible resting on the table as if it had never moved. The attendant, Carina I realized, was nowhere to be found.

"What the fu-," Quill started to curse but was interrupted when a light behind us blew up.

I took a shaky breath as I stared at the destruction asking dully, "What-who the hell left the pink girl alone with the bomb?"

"Come on!" Gamora shouted suddenly having already pulled herself together, jumping effortlessly over the desk.

"Oh by Thor's hammer… we-we almost died!" I gasped standing up running both my hands through my hair as I spun in a circle looking at the destruction around me while at the same time heading for the exit.

I paused only when I spotted one of the only cases that hadn't been completely destroyed, in a stunned state I looked into the cage blinking curiously as I did so. The dog inside whined at me pleadingly as it lowered its head.

Without needing any more encouragement I grabbed the nearest heavy object I could, tossing it as hard as I could at the glass. The second the glass had been removed the dog barked happily at me before he run out of the room to freedom.

I smiled weakly after him, before I followed after him moving quickly through what had once been the packed bar. It appeared that the attendant wasn't the only one not to survive the blast. It was only now that I realized the Collector, Tivan I think, seemed to have disappeared. Maybe the attendant had taken her vengeance.

When I left the ruins of the bar I was pleasantly surprised to find Rocket and Groot just getting up, seems they had managed to successfully outrun the blast. I forced myself to take a deep breath trying to calm myself down as I ran my hands through my hair. This whole thing just got a whole lot more complicated.


	10. Orb of Death

I had never hyperventilated before, at least not that I could remember. But I immediately decided I didn't like it as I gasped, struggling to get my breathing back under control. I felt myself shaking, the adrenaline from the near death experiences still causing my heart to beat erratically. Yep, definitely hated hyperventilating. Where was a paper bag when you needed it?

I bended over, supporting myself by resting my hands on my knees. Thanking Odin and whoever else I could think of that I was still alive, while at the same time my big head decided to calculate the percentage that we would have survived the blast. The number was not comforting.

"How could I think Tivan could contain whatever was in the orb?"

I looked up rising slowly as Quill and Gamora exited the ruins of the bar, looking a little worse for wears but still mostly alive… and still holding the death orb. My eyes widened in shock, why did she have that?

"What do you still have it for?" Rocket demanded, now completely sobered up by this experience as he pulled on the fur on his face.

"What are we gonna do, leave it in there?!" Quill demanded just as hysterical as the rest of us.

"Well what do you expect us to do with it?" I shouted waving my hands around crazily, "In case you missed the last five minutes, that orb just turned somebody into a bomb!"

"I can't believe you had that in your purse!" Rocket shouted pointing at the orb for emphasis.

"It's not a purse. It's a knapsack!" Quill argued instantly changing the subject away from the orb of death that Gamora was still carrying.

"It looks like a purse!" I shouted at him as I quickly began pacing, the adrenaline forcing me to move around.

"We have to bring this to the Nova Corps." Gamora insisted suddenly back on track, "There's a chance they can contain it."

"You think somebody can contain that thing?" I asked her in disbelief, now struggling to understand how the hell a couple inches of metal had managed to keep that thing contained for so long.

"Are you kidding me?" Rocket demanded shrilly, "We're wanted by the Nova Corps. Just give it to Ronan!"

"So he can destroy the galaxy?" Quill shouted back at him, we seemed to be doing a lot of it right now.

"What are you, some saint all of a sudden?" Rocket shouted in disbelief, "What has the galaxy ever done for you? Why would you wanna save it?"

"I can think up a few good reasons off the top of my head!" I offered shaking my head as I paced, pressing my closed fist against my chin.

Quill looked down at the raccoon as he yelled, "Because I'm one of the idiots who lives in it!"

"There's a good reason," I added unhelpfully as I began biting my thumb nail.

I paused in my steps looking back when Gamora suddenly grabbed Quill's jack, speaking in an urgent voice, "Peter, listen to me. We cannot allow the stone to fall into Ronan's hands. We have to go back to your ship, and deliver it to Nova."

"Right, right, okay. I think you're right." Quill nodded in agreement as I began to pace again. For just a moment I thought that he was being a good person, a decent human being. Until he suggested hopefully, "Or we could give it to somebody who's not going to arrest us, who's really nice, for a whole lot of money."

I stopped pacing completely turning slowly to face Quill who looked around at us hopefully as he added for good measure, "I think it's a really good balance between both of your points of view."

"_You_ are a curly haired son of a bitch," I cursed at him before turning so I could begin pacing again only to stop dead at the new sight before me. I called back to them trying to be as calm a possible, "Uh, guys?"

"You're despicable." Gamora snapped at Quill angrily.

"Hey guys?" I called a little louder hoping somebody would notice.

"Dishonorable," Gamora continued clearly not done with her tirade.

"Guys, seriously, need your attention over here!" I shouted louder.

"Faithless!" Gamora shouted still ignoring me clearly about to charge away from Quill until she stopped dead next to me with a gasp.

"GUYS!" I screamed this time rolling my eyes as I gestured to the problem I found in our path, "Enemy spaceships, like two feet from us! Anybody else worried here?"

"Oh no," Gamora gasped now fully aware of our situation as she looked over the numerous spaceships, all of which totally looked like bad guy space ships FYI. And standing directly in front of them with his arms wide clutching two long knives was a very familiar blue shirtless figure.

"Drax, what the hell man?!" I shouted to him throwing my arms up in the air at his foolishness.

"You called Ronan?" Quill questioned the lunatic loudly coming up on my other side.

One of the ships suddenly began to land in front of the fearless Drax, looking around I suggested firmly, "Okay, I think we need to run. Like right now."

"Quill! Don't you move, boy!"

I turned surprised looking around the stunned Gamora, narrowing my eyes until I spotted a centurion in a red coat running towards us with an infuriated look on his face. I sighed slouching a bit as I snapped sarcastically, "And now there's that guy! Is there anyone else we have to be worried about? I can send them a message right now, if we need to!"

If the rest of the group found my sarcasm funny or annoying they didn't waste time telling me, instead choosing to make a mad dash towards some mostly empty mining ships. I guess it didn't matter either way, Gamora and Quill would probably just knock out anyone in them.

I jumped surprised when somebody suddenly grabbed my arm spinning me around to face the blue centurion who glared at me dangerously. Before he could even ask I point in some random direction and announced without question, "He went that way."

Satisfied with my answer the centurion let go of my arm and hurried off in that direction. Satisfied that my lie had been bought I looked around the area debating on where I should go. I smiled confidently when I spotted the perfect vantage point. Sniper rifle in hand I ran, pushing through the crowd of panicking civilians. Luckily the building I had picked had a perfect ladder allowing me to climb up the side without having to waste time finding a more creative way up.

Once up on the top of the building I pulled out a small earpiece as I made my way towards the edge trying to pick out the best snipping position. Sitting down on one knee I placed the earpiece in my ear and opened up a program on the HWT, quickly I went through the available, and not so available, com links before I easily picked out the correct one I needed.

I pulled out my sniper, unloading it before I settled down on the roof and looked through the scoop taking stalk of everything that was going on. I looked around the airfield, I spotted a couple mining ships and more than a few enemy ships.

I smirked as I found a weak place in one of the faster ones, easily taking aim and firing smirking as I watch the ship go up into flames.

"What the hell was that?" Rocket shouted over the com link, shocked that the ship in front of him and seemingly decided to spontaneously combust.

"Oh relax, it's just me." I assured him as I took aim again this time at one that was coming up behind Quill promising, "I shall try very hard not to hit you."

Rocket sighed, very unconvinced by my promise, but he seemed to drop it as he asked a little worried, "Whatever, do you see Groot anywhere?"

"Groot? I thought he was with you!" I admitted a little surprised that a tree could be missing as I fired down the ship that had been behind Quill.

"Nah, he can't fit in the pod, just look around for him will ya?" Rocket dismissed.

"You got it, give me a sec," I agreed helpfully turning the scope away from the action and back towards the crowd glancing around for a second before I announced, "I see that centurion, still looking totally pissed off."

"I may have caused that." Quill admitted almost sounding sheepish.

"Not surprisingly in the least," I sighed off handedly as I continued on with the search until I found the next interesting sight, "Um, I spy with my little eye Drax getting his butt handed to him by a blue guy. Who I can only assume is this Ronan guy I've heard so much about."

"Serves him right!" Rocket announced unsympathetically as I continued with my search for Groot.

"Well I'm not really seeing any-AH!" I screamed leaping back in horror as all of a sudden an extremely magnified image of Groot's eye appeared in front of the scope, a cheerful innocent smile on his face as he appeared.

"Phoenix? Phoenix! Hey! You still there?" Quill shouted into the mic worriedly, apparently my scream having been sent over the link.

I remained on my back for a moment, breathing heavily as I stared at the ceiling before I announced sitting up as I glared at the tree, "I found him."

I looked over the edge to find that Groot had grown his legs up, like when he was getting the batter from the watchtower, to stand by where I was snipping. Now aware of where I was Groot came up to stand next to me as I got back into position looking throw the scope again only to gasp surprised as one of Ronan's ships exploded as one of the littler mining ships sailed right through it like a giant wrecking ball.

"Holy cow! Who did that? I saw that from here!" I shouted over the mic, my only response was an amused chuckle that sound like it was from Quill. Now a little annoyed I demanded over the com, "Wait, have you guys been doing that this whole time? I want a mining ship!"

The chuckle got a little lower until all of a sudden it cut out with a crack. I frowned instinctively putting a hand on my headpiece as I asked, "Guys? Hey guys? Does anybody copy? Guys?"

I gave them a chance to response and quickly I checked the scope again making sure that no one had been killed. I spotted the ships still going around so I sighed standing hesitantly shaking my head as I announced, "They must have gone out of range."

I took a moment to curse whoever had built those pods, the sad thing was everybody else could probably still hear me.

I glanced around the area, hoping I could find something to do to be at least slightly helpful. I sighed in agitation when I realized that there was something helpful I could do, Groot and me anyways. I looked to the tree curious to see if he had any intentions of going somewhere, I was a little surprised to find him looking at me expectedly. Looks like I was in charge.

"Alright, Groot." I announced reluctantly heading back towards the ladder as I reluctantly decided, "We have a homicidal lunatic to save."

As much trouble as that jerk had caused his reasoning was just, as stupid as that may sound, and he was actually a funny guy. At least that's what I told myself, instead of admitting that I might possibly just want to do the right thing.

Groot at least seemed pleased with my decision, humming excitedly as he followed me back down towards the ground. We hurried to where I had last seen the blue man fighting Ronan, but when we reached there I found the area eerily empty. I looked around confused, "Well, where is he?"

I looked up as a wooden finger tapped my shoulder, Groot looked concerned as he pointed at something on the ground. I frowned lowering myself down to get a better look, running my fingers along the marks in the ground, "Drag marks?"

I get back to my feet glancing at Groot to make sure the ent was still following me as I began following the drag marks, whatever had been dragged it was heavy and big. Just like a certain blue man who we were looking for. I was a little shocked to find the drag marks stop just short of a giant tub of creepy yellow liquid, really don't want to know what that stuff is.

"Oh hell," I groaned in despair lowering myself down to grab the edge if the tub and shouted, "Drax!"

I'm not sure how much good I thought this would do, but Groot seemed to have come up with a better plan. The tree man gently grabbed my shoulder so he could tug me back, with the room he kneeled down and reached down and began searching through the gross tub with his bare hands. He was a brave tree, I realized as I scrunched up my nose. I watched as he moved his hand around a bit until suddenly he hummed again and began lifting. When his hand came up he brought up the seemingly dead Drax.

"What do we do?" I gasped as Groot set the lunatic down on the dirt. I looked around the area as I admitted, "He's not breathing, and I can't do CPR!"

I looked back down as Groot suddenly held up his hand, his finger sharping into what almost looked like one of those things used to get sap out of trees. Before I could ask he stabbed Drax in the chest, I nearly screamed only to find it replaced by a breath of relief as the destroyer began heaving and gasping. Spitting out the sick yellow liquid that had been stuck in his lungs. Groot pulled his finger away smiling happily. I patted Groot on the back praising the tree proudly, "Alright, Groot!"

Drax let out a low groan and I moved forward to lean over him calling, "Yo Captain Crazy! Can you hear me?"

Drax could only give me a weird look as he continued to suck in air, but I took that as a yes. I jumped surprised when suddenly something crashed/landed behind us. Kicking up even more dust up into the already gross air.

I waved my hand in front of my face in a useless attempt to get dust away from my face, Groot taking the opportunity to help Drax sit up. I blinked my eyes open as the small figure of Rocket emerged from the pod yelling angrily, "Blasted idiot! They're all idiots!"

"Well, what happened?" I demanded crossing my arms looking around to make sure no one else was about to crash.

"Quill just got himself captured!" Rocket informed us still shouting at the idiocy of our companions. I let out a low curse as Rocket glared at Drax shouting accusingly, "None of this ever would have happened if you didn't try to single-handedly take on a frickin' arm!"

I reached up running my hand through my hair again, failing to come up with any response to this. My mind was racing as I tried, and failed, to think up some kind of plan.

"You're right,"

I looked back down at Drax, startled at the crazed man's admission he looked almost guilty as he went on, "I was a fool. All the anger, all the rage, was just to cover my loss."

I shifted my weight onto my left leg and let out a deep sigh, reaching up to rub my temple as his words settled in. This whole thing was so messed up.

"Oh boo-hoo-hoo! My wife and child are dead!"

"DUDE!" I shouted startled my head snapping up to glare heatedly at the raccoon's startling comment, and here I thought Quill was the ass here! Even Groot seemed shocked by his friend's response, covering his mouth as he gasped.

"Oh, I don't care if it's mean!" Rocket shouted at us uncaring of how evil his previous mockery was. Instead his attention was draw back to Drax as he shouted, "Everybody's got dead people! It's no excuse to get everyone else dead along the way!"

I bite my lip as this comment hit a little too close to home for me, hesitantly clenching and unclenching my fists.

"Come on Groot," Rocket announced much more calm, "Ronan has the stone. The only chance we got is to get to the other side of the universe as fast as we can and maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to live full lives before that whack-job ever gets there!"

I frowned then taking in what Rocket had said. Yes that might be the best chance any of us had, maybe it really was out only chance. But… why did it feel so wrong?

"I am Groot."

I looked up at the Flora Colossus, who now stood to his full height as he looked down at his fury companion.

"'Save them'?" Rocket repeated, unconsciously translating for us, "How?"

Groot shrugged his shoulders looking down uncertainly at the ground as he said, "I am Groot…"

This was quite possible the weirdest one sided conversation I had ever seen.

"I know they're the only friends we ever had!" Rocket admitted, though it sounded like he was hesitant to admit that. I raised my eyebrow in shock at his reveal, I don't remember becoming friends. I looked down as him as he continued to argue, "But there's an army of Ravagers around them! And there's only two of us!"

"Three." Drax corrected firmly as he got to his feet.

"I count four," I corrected him setting one hand on my hip as a crooked smile pulled up my lips.

All eyes fell on Rocket who looked around us like we were nuts, when he realized we were serious he grabbed his ears pulling at them slightly before turning and began kicking some grass shouting as he did so, "You're making me… beat up… grass!"

I smirked at his back singing cheerfully, "I'll let you fly the ship."

Almost instantly the raccoon stopped kicking.


	11. Not My Idea

We came up with a plan. Now, I would not call it a good plan, or a smart one, or even one I particularly agreed with, but it was a plan. A plan that had been suggested by Rocket, and as such I made a mental note to never ever let the coon decide on the plans again. Call me paranoid but I had this sinking feeling that any and all plans he was involved with making would involve something going boom. Today that something was the Ravager ship. Which currently held the very two people we were attempting to save, like I said not a smart plan.

"This is the worst plan ever." I announced once again from the copilot chair as we neared the Ravager's ship. I was actually a little surprised that Groot was okay with this plan actually. Now Drax, you might be wondering where he is. You see he was currently strapped to the top of the ship, with Rocket's Hadron Enforcer. And here I just wanted to blow up a moon.

"Well I don't hear you making up any suggestions!" Rocket snapped rolling his eyes.

"I made many suggestions. And all of those suggestions did not involve blowing up a ship which currently has the very people we are trying to save on it!" I shouted as we slowed to a stop in front of the Ravager ship. Honestly my suggestion of sneaking onto the ship and just taking Quill and Gamora would have worked perfectly.

"Well… too late." Rocket announced shrugging helplessly before smirking evilly as he fired a couple warning shots at the much bigger ship before us.

He gave them a minute to process that they were under attack before he opened a channel as he shouted, "Attention idiots! The lunatic on top of this craft is holding a Hadron Enforcer. It's a weapon of my own design. If you don't hand over our companions now he's gonna tear your ship a new one. A very big new one!"

"For the record, I have nothing to do with this," I called over the channel quickly shaking my hand though they couldn't see me, "This is all him. I have no say in this."

"I'm giving you to the count of 5," Rocket announced them ignoring me. He continued to sit there grinning slightly as he began counting down, a little faster than I was comfortable with. Luckily he only got to 3 before the frantic familiar voice of Quill shouted over the comm, "Rocket, it's me, for god sakes! We figured it out! We're fine!"

I let out a sigh of relief practically melting into my seat in relief, grinning slightly. I would never admit it but it was a little comforting to know that they were okay.

"Oh hey, Quill. What's going on?" Rocket asked casually almost sounding surprised

"Does this mean I do not need to fire?" Another voice called curiously.

I let out a low sigh as I called back, "No, Drax. You do not need to fire."

Not long after Quill and Gamora were returned to us, both thankfully in one piece but also both looking a little nervous. We gathered down in what I could only call the main room, settling ourselves down in a circle before Quill dropped the bomb.

"You call that 'figured it out'?" Rocket yelled in disbelief at Quill's horrible news, "We're gonna rob the guys who just beat us senseless?"

"Well I stand corrected. This is the worst plan ever." I corrected myself, crossing my arms before nodding at Rocket, "I apologize, Rocket."

"Oh you wanna talk about senseless? How about trying to save us by blowing us up?" Quill countered a little pissed about that as Rocket nodded back at me.

"We were only gonna blow them up, if they didn't turn you over!" Rocket corrected defensively.

Quill looked at him like he was insane as he demanded, "And how on earth were they gonna turn us over when you only gave them to a count of five?!"

"We didn't have time to work out the minutiae of the plan!" Rocket yelled back at him looking briefly to Groot as he vented, "This is what we get for acting altruistically."

"I am Groot."

"They are ungrateful!" Rocket agreed wholeheartedly.

"This is just so entertaining to watch," I admitted looking between the two of them mildly amused by the one sided conversation.

Gamora sighed interrupting us, "What's important now, is we get the Ravagers' army to help us save Xandar!"

"So we can give the stone to Yondu, who's just gonna sell it somebody even worse?" Rocket countered, pointing out what I considered to be the worst part of this.

"We'll figure that part out later," Quill assured us, pushing the problem away for the time being.

"We have to stop Ronan." Gamora insisted with a note of desperation.

"How?" Rocket shouted unconvinced.

"I have a plan." Quill suddenly announced confidently.

I leveled him with a disbelieving look as I asked generally surprised, "_You_? You have a plan?"

"Yes." Quill stammered, a bit of his confidence breaking away with my disbelief, leaving me very unassured.

"Okay first of all, you're copying me from when I said I had a plan," Rocket declared.

"No, I'm not." Quill denied defensively, "People say it all the time. It's not that unique of a thing to say."

Rocket rolled his eyes as he continued, "Secondly, I don't even believe you have a plan."

Quill faltered a bit as he tinkered his previous statement, "I have… part of a plan."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! You liar that's not a plan!" I declared shaking my head.

"What percentage of a plan do you have?" Drax asked looking for a bright side in this.

"You don't get to ask questions after the nonsense you pulled on Knowhere." Gamora decreed pointing at the troublemaker.

"I just saved Quill!" Drax said sounding mildly insulted.

"We've already established that you blowing up the ship I'm on it not saving me!" Quill reminded the warrior.

"When did we establish this?" Drax questioned.

Quill's eyes widened again as he yelled, "Like three seconds around!"

"I wasn't listening, I was thinking of something else." Drax admitted dropping his case as he put his hands together.

"Good to know we're all on the same page here." I groaned sarcastically shaking my head and leaning back on my chair.

"She's right, you don't get an opinion." Rocket agreed with Gamora before he turned back to Quill repeating the question, "What percentage?"

"I don't know," Quill admitted hesitantly, "Twelve percent."

"Twelve percent?" Rocket repeated, only to throw his head back and laugh.

"That's a fake laugh!" Quill accused quickly.

Rocket snapped his head back insisted, "It's real!"

"Totally fake!"

"That is the most real, authentic, hysterical laugh of my entire life! Because that it now a plan!" Rocket shouted.

"It's barely a concept," Gamora agreed reluctantly.

"You're taking their side?" Quill accused her sounding almost hurt by this minor betrayal.

"I am Groot." The tree said shrugging calmly.

"So what if it's better than eleven percent?" Rocket demanded, "What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"Thank you, Groot! Thank you!" Quill said relieved that someone had faith in him as he patted the tree on the shoulder, "See? Groot's the only one of you who has a clue!"

"Uh, check again." I warned him as Groot began, wait a minute, it looks like he was trying to eat one of the twigs on his shoulder. Quill looked down at him over to rub his eyes with a sigh.

"Guys. Come on. Yondu is going to be here in two seconds. He expects to hear this great plan of ours!" Quill began in a quivering voice looking around at us before he admitted, "I need your help."

I wrapped my arms around myself looking around at the group, avoiding looking Quill in the eyes.

Quill sighed before he began what I could only assume was his uplifting speech, "I look around at us. And you know what I see?"

I looked up at him expectantly, with a minor hope that he was going to say something awesome.

"Losers."

Or he could try that. I scoffed at him shaking my head at his choice of words as the others glared at him, glancing around at one another as if debating on if they should kill him. He looked around at us a little panicked realizing his mistake before he corrected, "I, mean, like folks who have lost stuff."

I blinked at him at his quick save.

"And we have. Man, we have, all of us." Quill continued quickly, fueled by the fact that he seemed to have us on the same page, "Our homes our families, normal lives."

I bite my lip looking away from Quill starting intensely on a single spot on the ground. Maybe, just maybe, Quill wasn't as big of an idiot as I had thought.

"And, usually, life takes more than it gives. But not today. Today, it's given us something. It has given us a chance." Quill declared bravely.

Unable to stay quite anymore, though not able to force myself to look up I asked in a quiet voice, "To do what?"

"To give a shit." Quill answered simply, "For once. Not run away. I, for one, am not going to stand by and watch as Ronan whips out billions of innocents lives."

"Look Quill," Rocket softly began hesitation in every word, "Stopping Ronan, it's impossible. You're asking us to die."

I closed my eyes at this, the reality of the situation was… difficult to say the least.

"Yeah, I guess I am." Quill admitted defeated, and I could hear him moving as if turning away from us.

No one spoke, no one dared to break the silence as Rocket's words sunk in. But I think my thoughts where a little different than the rest of them. I was not asking myself if I was willing to die trying to save millions. I had already answered that question for myself when Loki first came through that portal.

Not even then.

Going back to the start of this, when I first learned of SHIELD. I remembered Natasha looking me in the eyes and asking me that question. If I was truly willing to risk life and limb to do this, to save people.

Because when people ask me that question I always found myself asking myself one. It wasn't if I was willing to die, the real question was could I live with myself if I didn't. But then there was still a tiny part of me that made me hesitate.

"Quill," Gamora broke the silence suddenly, I snapped my eyes opened to look at her as she spoke. Quill turned back to face her as she began slowly, "I have lived most my life surrounded by my enemies."

I titled my head, frowning with uncertainty as she stood to her full height announcing firmly with a grateful tone, "I will be grateful to die among my friends."

Oh great, more talk of friendship.

I looked over suspiciously as Drax stood as well a small smile on his big blue face as he declared, "You are an honorable man, Quill. I will fight beside you. And in the end, I will see my wife and daughter again."

I rolled my eyes groaning out a number of choice swears rubbing my face grumpily. Before I could think better of me I jumped to my feet setting my hands on my hips as I announced with a smile I couldn't stop, "Alright, just for the record, I still totally despise you all."

I ignored the way Quill smiled at me knowingly instead smirking at Groot as he stood with his catchphrase, "I am Groot."

Finally all eyes fell on the seated Rocket, waiting expectantly as he looked around us suspiciously.

"What the hell I don't have that long a lifespan anyway." Rocket sighed rolling his eyes before standing up on top of the boxes he had been sitting on. He looked around us, "Now I'm standing. Y'all happy? We're all standing up now. Bunch of jackasses, standing in a circle."


	12. Your What Message

This time during the planning phase I put my foot down, because so far all ideas that had come from the minds of Quill and Rocket had been done right horrible. Rocket's especially though I resisted the urge to point fingers. At least he seemed mostly happy with the idea that I came up with, but that might be because we were going to kill Ronan with the Hadron Enforcer. With the information we got from Gamora on Ronan's ship we had developed a pretty good plan.

We had just run into a bit of a wall.

Sure it would be okay if we just flew at Ronan's bigger ship, but it would be so much better if we had some kind of distraction. By my calculations we could save over 1/5 of ours ships if we had that distraction the only problem I had was I couldn't figure out what kind of distraction we could use.

It was a puzzler to be sure. One that was solved faster than I thought.

Quill, for some reason, decided to introduce me to Yondu having remembered that I was going to meet the blue space pirate when I had been on Xandar.

To his credit Yondu was not mad, at least not at me, he sort of cuffed the side of Quill's head as he snapped at him blaming him for my imprisonment. Decided that we have plenty of time Yondu through his arm over my shoulder and began leading me away towards the ships that he had wanted me to fix.

Quill thankfully decided to tail along with us, I wasn't completely comfortable alone with the Ravagers since one of them had made a comment about eating me. They swore they wouldn't though, but I still insisted on using Quill as a shield since he was more familiar with these guys than I was.

"Here it is!" Yondu announced opening a door to a fairly large hanger.

"Whoa, you aren't talking about those old pieces of junk?" Quill gasped raising an eyebrow skeptically, "Those things haven't worked for years."

I took one step into the room and then stopped completely a wicked smile slowly forming on my face as Yondu and Quill began mindlessly arguing over the state of the two ships I found. I spun holding out my arms as I announced, "Gentlemen! Our chances of survival have just doubled!"

The two of them glanced at one another, silently debating my mental state.

Nearly four hours later were suiting up in brand new outfits, curtesy of the Ravagers. Though they promised they were new and hadn't been used by those who were not longer with us. I decided to keep my jacket, though I found that I was a big fan of the pants and the heeled boots.

I may have spent a couple minutes in front of the mirror goofing off, until Gamora walked into the room and found me rolling and pretending to shoot things with my sniper.

I ended up taking the co-pilot chair on the Milano, well actually I called it about three hours ago. Though in the end it didn't matter. Rocket was riding, well driving Quill's ship who job was to blast a hole in the side of the ship that we could get into.

I was basically bouncing up and down when we finally, more than a little thrilled to see the newly fixed ships. Eager to see the fruit of my labor.

"This is a terrible plan," Gamora decided suddenly as we took off.

"You're the one who said you wanted to die among friends!" Quill pointed out smugly.

"And actually, it's not nearly as bad as the one on the Kyln," I reasoned shrugging as I looked out the window at all the ships announcing cheerfully, "Honestly, I just wanna see some ships turned into fireballs. And if we do somehow manage to get to Ronan I wanna take off his ear."

Quill frowned confused looking over at me as he asked, "Uh, why his ear?"

"Well, I spent like two hours calculating exactly what angle and how much pressure I would need to bite off your ear before Groot or the guards could stop me," I explained unapologetically. Quill made a weird choking noise reaching up to cover his left ear as he started at me.

"What?!" He gasped leaning away from me.

I gave him a look shaking my head at him, "It was before the whole tazer incident. Would you calm down you big baby? Your ears are safe."

Quill sighed in relief slouching down a bit in his chair.

I smirked evilly announcing calmly, "Besides, I'm much more likely to kick you in the groin if you tick me off."

Quill let out another choking noise which made me laugh hysterically, shaking my head. I think I even heard Gamora and Drax chuckle. Before more could be said the main event began.

I let out a girlish squeal when Yondu gave the order, firing two giant balls of fire at Ronan's main ship.

After a couple of feet the two balls exploded creating a giant wall of fire covering us so we could dive under Ronan's ship without him seeing. Once we were under Rocket and a couple other ships dived over towards the weakest part of the haul and began firing.

Luckily I wasn't flying, so I was free to clap excitedly as Quill flew us threw the chaos without getting us all killed. And it didn't take long for Rocket to inform us that the hole in the side was done.

"On our way," I called over the comm distractedly looking out over the chaos around us, fulfilling my wish to see ship burst into flames. Everything was going great until suddenly Yondu shouted over the comm, saying that he had been hit.

"No more games with me, boy." The captain of the Ravagers warned darkly, "I'll see you at the end of this."

I looked around the sides trying to watch while they went down but I quickly found that we were being swarmed, there were more ships than I had thought.

"Crap," I gasped as the Milano jerked around to avoid an enemy ship that seemed to have been intent on suicide bombing up. With a reluctant sigh I looked around us announcing, "There's too many of them. We can't make it through."

No sooner had I said this I found that I had spoken too soon, my eyes widened when one ship right in front of us burst into flames. I moved around trying to see where it had come from until I looked on the side and was taken back when I recognized the ships that appeared next to us, "Nova Corps? What the heck are they doing here-wait that's a stupid question never mind."

"Peter Quill," A voice came over the comm that was oddly British sounding, "This is Denarian Saal of the Nova Corps. For the record I advised against trusting you here."

I smiled looking around watching Nova Corps ships come from almost nowhere giving us back the upper hand in this fight.

"They got my dick message!" Quill shouted excitedly.

"Yeah! Wait a minute, what?!" I shouted eyes widening as I turned back to him.

Quill shook his head vigorously, "No, not like that!"

"Prove me wrong," Saal dared us.

"We happily accept your challenge sir," I announced over the comm as Quill hit the thrusters shooting us forward. Flying to the opening was much easier now that we had the Nova Corps help once inside it reminded me a little of the watch tower escape ride.

At least Drax seemed to be having the time of his life, laughing joyfully as if he was on a roller coaster. We jerked around the halls, moving down the tunnel like areas while running down multiple unsuspecting bad guys.

Our landing was about the same as last time as we slid to a relatively smooth stop. Once stopped Drax let out a loud cheer throwing up his arms as he laughed gleefully, "YES!"

I looked at the rest of them trying to judge if anyone was hurt. Gamora looked over at Quill with a weak smile as she announced, "We're just like Kevin Bacon."

"Kevin-what? Kevin Bacon? What the hell?" I questioned looking between her and Quill, trying to decide if I was missing a joke or Gamora had a concussion. I let it go when Quill nodded at me signaling that it was okay. We left the ship only to realize I had a flaw in my plan. It was pitch black in here, I had wrongfully assumed that they would light the ship.

I guess that was too much to ask for a raging sociopath.

"I can barely see." Drax annoyed sounding annoyed.

"I would have brought a flashlight," I admitted calmly, "But I assumed that even psycho's would, you know, light their ships."

I blinked surprised when the room suddenly lit up in a soft warm glow, I looked around as small little floating things flew up into the area lighting the whole area. I looked behind me towards were they seemed to be coming from. I wasn't surprised when I found they were all coming from Groot.

"When did you learn to do that?" Drax asked.

"I'm pretty sure the answer is 'I am Groot'." Peter sighed knowingly as he began walking, leading us forward into the room.

For a moment the room was filled with comfortable silence until Drax spoke, "I want you all to know that I am grateful for your acceptance of me after my bluntness. It is pleasing to once again have friends."

"No problem, man." I assured him figuring that was the end of his little speech. I was wrong.

"You, Quill, are my friend."

"Thanks," Quill thanks him a little awkwardly.

"This dumb tree, he is my friend."

I looked back at him a little confused, even as Groot took no offense by humming contently.

"You, young Phoenix, are my friend."

"Cool." I said nodding in response pleased that I had been fit in as well, but at the same time wondering curiously how far Drax planned on this conversation going.

"And this green whore-," Drax began.

Gamora seemed to have had enough because at last she shouted interrupting the destroyer, "Oh, you must stop!"

I had prepared myself to follow along with Drax's declarations of friendship, if only because it seemed to be really getting on everybody's nerves. What where I had been about to say died on the tongue when suddenly a vaguely familiar blue woman jumped from nowhere into our path.

Unable to stop the sarcasm I had built up I leveled her with a calm stare as I announced, "Hey, it's you! Blue… weird…stabby lady! Who are you here to kill today?"

"Gamora!" The woman shouted accusingly eyes locked on our green companion as she held out two knives. She began her villain speech, "Look at what you have done. You have always been weak. You stupid, traitorous-,"

To say I had been surprised when said blue woman disappeared into a flash of light would be more than an understatement. I had been fully prepared to sit and wait through her six minute long monologue cursing at Gamora, evidently Drax was not. I looked at the crazed man who held up his still smoking blaster looking around at us briefly.

"Nobody talks to my friend that way." Was all Drax had to say on the matter.

I took a moment before I told him truthfully, "You have just become my favorite."

Gamora recovered from her shock, looking almost grateful as she announced nodding in a direction, "Head to the flight deck. I'll shut down the power to the security doors."

"Good luck!" I called to her unhelpfully as we headed down the tunnel she had nodded too. We kept a pretty even pace as we hurried down the halls, and I was just beginning to wonder how good our luck was when we ran into trouble. We had just turned a corner when we were forced to slide to a quick stop, before us stood what seemed to be the only guards in the whole area. Including on who looked pretty funny, probably a commander or something.

His eyes widened at Quill before he narrowed them and smiled, "Star-Lord."

"Finally," Quill whispered far too happy about being recognized, it was if a lifelong dream of his had suddenly been fulfilled.

Uncaring on what kind of weird dreams Quill had I very quickly lifted my rifle firing two shots into the crowd and cheering joyfully when both ended up killing a total of four guards. Now everything after that turned into a bit of a blur, I hadn't really been paying attention to detail as I fought off the numerous guards around us.

Although I do realize that I could have actually sat out, the guards were unprepared and definitely not the smartest that Ronan had to offer. I even got one of them to fall for the 'what's that' trick. Though I did notice that for some reason my companions, or more specifically Drax and Groot, kept literally throwing guys at me. It was annoying to say the least.

Not to mention when Drax threw a knife which I barely managed to dodge away from, we really needed to work on teamwork.

I turned about to yell at him, and demand if this was how he treated his 'friends' only to find him preoccupied with the leader guy who seemed to have known Quill. I watched with mild interest as he grabbed onto some circuits on the man's head growling threateningly, "Finger to the throat means death."

With that he viciously ripped out the circuits he had gotten a hold up, thankfully we didn't get a sight of the man's brains… well sort of. It seemed the man was more of a cyborg going off of all the wiring in his head. Drax turned towards Quill then smiling as he announced, "Metaphor."

Quill, under his mask, shrugged nodding a bit as his admitted, "Yeah, sorta."

"A little less metaphoric and a little more literal." I commented as I turned about to head down the hall we needed one to very quickly back up when more soldiers came charging down. Before I could even take aim Groot had moved in front of me extending his arm through about six guard's chest. The remaining guards were taken out when Groot began using the others like a giant battering ram.

Only he kept bashing them against the wall and the ceiling and the floor, shouting as he did so.

"Um… hey Groot?" I called hesitantly to the tree reaching out one hand to try to stop the tree. Very quickly Quill grabbed my shoulder pulling me back as he shook his head vigorously. I ignored the way he kept his hand on my shoulder watching as Groot continued his assault on the now very dead soldiers.

Suddenly though he dropped them. And the tree man turned to us smiling cheerfully.


	13. Out of Luck

The rest of the ship seemed to be much easier to manoeuvre through, though I suspected that was because a good deal of Ronan's forces were on ships outside. Quill had once again taken the lead, keeping up a quick pace as we hurried down that halls. I gasped stumbling a bit as the ship jerked forcefully almost as soon as we reached the security doors. Now stopped I held up my HWT checking the readings take I had picked up from the sensors Nova had set up around the city. I announced loudly with an edge of desperation, "Guys, we gotta speed this up. Most of the Nova Corps just got whipped out."

The news was grim and I couldn't help feeling horrible about it, dammit I really was soft. Men poured from on of the tunnels heading towards us. Quill shot two of them before he called, "Gamora hasn't opened the door!"

"Great update Quill, but I have eyes too!" I shouted as I began snipping a few of the rushing men before they could reach us.

"I was not talking to you, Nixy!" Quill shouted back as he fired two more shots towards somebody who was trying to be sneaky.

My eyes narrowed and I slowly moved up to my full height lowering the rifle as I glared at Quill. In a low threatening voice I practically growled, "What did you just call me?"

"Phoenix is too big of a mouthful!" Quill admitted dismissively as he pulled out the Hadron Enforcer, now that the amount of guards seemed to have gone down. Groot had also taken up trying to break down the door by lazily hitting it with his arm.

"So you go with 'Nixy'?" I demanded shaking my head as I declared, "That is the weirdest name ever!"

"Well, honestly, your names already pretty weird. If anything I just made it better," Quill reasoned smugly, no doubt smirking under his mask. I huffed unhappily ready to shout only to ready my rifle when the door opened. I was a little surprised to find that running into the room were a psychopathic manic was housed, not to mention that he was armed with a infinity stone, was not nearly as terrifying as I thought it would be. I was a bit confused when Gamora simply and with what seemed like no effort shot through the floor, taking out two of the guards that had been stationed there. So why didn't we go through that way?

I pushed the thought from my mind as I ran stopping in front of Groot as time seemed to slow. Ronan turned to face us, in his hands he held a hammer. At the end I it, crushed into its side I could see the familiar glow of the infinity stone. The charging of the Hadron Enforcer rang around the room and all at once the world sped up being sent into fast forward. I was blinded for a moment and I felt a twinge of regret as I realised that Rocket would miss his weapon making something go boom.

The light faded slowly and I blinked a relieved smile on my face, Drax cheered excitedly assured that the man who killed his family was gone. But it seemed as soon as we got the taste of victory I frowned worriedly as something moved in the dust. I glanced over at the rest of them, Quill had lowered his mask confidently but his eyes widened when he saw the same thing I did.

"Oh shit." I whispered as a single ominous figure stood slowly. The dust hadn't even fully settled before Ronan raised his hammer aiming it towards us. I threw up my arms sucking in a breath as the blast flew at us at an alarming speed. The blast itself was really damaging, maybe it hadn't been aimed properly or something. But still the blast managed to send us flying.

For one moment it felt I was floating, but it only lasted until I slammed into the steps behind us.

I had twisted in the air so my head and my side connected painfully with the stairs, I moved slowly biting back a cry of pain when I shifted in the wrong way. Something was probably broken.

I heard someone shout and I looked up blinking harshly only for my eyes to widen when I saw Drax running at full speed towards the still standing Ronan. I closed my eyes for just a moment reaching up to rub at a throbbing spot on my head. Thankfully my skull wasn't cracked, it just seemed to be bruised. I opened my eyes again when I heard somebody, multiple someone's, groaning painfully.

I looked over mildly grateful when I spotted Gamora, Quill, and Groot all beginning to force themselves to their feet, and I slowly did the same.

I looked back to Ronan and Drax only to gasp with worry, a haunting image of seemingly dead Drax flashing in my mind, as I watched Ronan holding up the blue man by his throat. I jumped to my feet, about to rush to his help only for something else to catch my eye.

For a moment I thought that I had a concussion and I was just seeing things, but as the thing got bigger in the background I realized that it was not my imagination. When I finally realized what was happening I only had a couple Seconds to jump out of the way shouting panicked, "Incoming!"

I hit the ground just as the room shook at the force of a Milano came right through the glass wall, and somehow I knew it could only have been Rocket flying. The room slung a bit, I hadn't been able to dive as far away as I had wanted. When it came past it caused me to roll a bit, I stopped rolling breathing heavily as I waited for the room to settle. I coughed weakly as dust got into my throat.

I managed to force myself into a sitting position resting on my knees for a moment, looking around for my friends. Dammit now I was doing it; what was with this friendship? Was it a disease or something?

I spotted the ship first, having been forced to a stop when it slammed into the back wall. I followed the path of destruction towards the windows and I was immensely grateful when I found that Ronan was out of sight. If I had any luck left that would mean that the big blue bastard was under the rubble somewhere.

I looked around carefully noting that the pilots had been taken out in the attack too, it was then I noticed that the ship was going down. Falling at an alarming rate, I realized.

I shook my head instead looking around for any sign of life, I forced myself onto shaking legs as I looked around for them. I sighed with relief when I caught sight of Gamora dragging something along the ground. I hurried towards her with the intent to help, assuming that it was one of our friends. I was a little relieved to see that it was Drax, and he seemed to be alive. I rushed towards them and Gamora seemed a little surprised when I grabbed Drax's other arm and began dragging him back towards were we had last seen the others.

He must have weighted a ton and in any other situation I would have complained, but I sucked it up and continued to drag him towards were I could hear the others. We dragged him directly in front of Groot, and I felt my knees give out as my vision darkened for a moment.

I blinked trying to get rid the blur that surrounded everything, taking in deep breaths. I almost smiled when Quill appeared carrying a totally limp fury figure.

We settled down together in a circle in silence, no one spoke because no one needed too. Deep down we had all known if we did this there was almost no chance that we would live to see another day. But that didn't make it any easier to swallow. I wanted to say something, maybe thank them or something. Just to end this on a happy note. But I found that I couldn't even beginning to think of anything to say.

An eerie calm feeling settled over me as I looked over out the window, not really registering what I was looking at. Instead I saw New York City, swinging past me as I clung to my first friend ever. I remembered that night, when Peter had told me who he was and what he did.

And deep down that comforted me, but at the same time it also crushed me. Though I had never really acknowledged it there had always been a part of me that knew I planned on going back to Earth if nothing than to say my goodbyes to my friends and family who I had left behind.

I wanted to apologize to them, to tell them how sorry I was for leaving them. Peter, Natasha, FitzSimmons, Erik, Thor, Clint, Dad, Jarvis, Pepper, Rhodey, Jane, Darcy. God what had I put them through? I forced my thoughts away from that instead focusing on one of the only other comforts I had. I looked down at my HWT, no at the necklace that belonged to someone I had never gotten a chance to meet as was assure that I wasn't dying along, like Gamora said it was nice to die among friends.

I turned my head startled when I felt something rub against my arm. My eyes widened with shock as I looked around now realizing what had been happening while I hadn't been paying attention. I blinked away tears I didn't know I had been about to shed as branches began to spread around all of us.

I turned slowly towards the only one I knew could be responsible whispering curiously, "Groot?"

The tree man only kept his arms raised as the branches he made spread around us coming together on the other side, sealing us in a wooden sphere. My eyes widened when I realized with horrifying clarity what Groot was doing.

He was saving us.

"No Groot." A small voice whispered. I turned to look at the now awake Rocket who was standing in front of Groot.

"You can't you'll die." Rocket continued his voice full of despair. The tears I had just been trying to blink away came back with a vengeance and it took all my willpower to stop them from streaming down my face.

"Why are you doing this?" Rocket demanded covering his sadness with outrage, as if he was angry that his best friend would even consider sacrificing himself to save us.

The last thing I heard before the world disappeared into a flash of white light was a calm deep voice.

"We are Groot."


	14. Ultimate Dance-Off

I blinked my eyes open, blearily blinking at the far too bright sky that seemed much too cheery for the situation at hand. As I blinked up at the blue I decided that I must be dead, or at least this must be what dying felt like. For once I wished I could remember dying the first time so I could have something to compare this feeling too. Nothing really hurt particularly, well that's a lie everything hurt, but it all seemed to numb together to the point that I couldn't feel much. It was like my pain sensors had overloaded and could simply not register anymore.

I was a little disappointed when I realized that I could not think of a way to blame Quill for this mess, but you better believe I tried. Instead I settled on blaming the raging blue psychopath that brought on all this madness.

Either way I was having the strangest feeling of déjà vu as I woke up. Except for a few curial things, like the too bright sky and the soundtrack that took me a moment to realize I was not imagining. Last time I woke up I know I didn't hear the Five Starships band playing.

Curiosity got the best of me and I forced my limp limbs to move shifting around until I managed to lift myself up on my elbows looking around the area. It would appear that everyone made it, all of us lying around a pile of splintered wood. And that was when I realized we were one giant tree short.

Tears made my vision blurry and I reached one hand up to stubbornly whip them away, purposefully avoiding looking at Rocket who was kneeling on the ground clutching something in his hand.

Covering up my sadness with annoyance I groaned shaking my head agitated, "The Starships are so not helping here."

I sat up more now sitting with my knees pulled up a bit as I looked around. I glanced back then when I heard some gasping. My eyes widened before I muttered bitterly just loud enough that those around me could here, "What the hell? Does Nova not understand how evacuations work?!"

The giant herd of people standing around us at the destruction caused by the crash seemed too stunned to really pay attention to anything I had to say. I shook my head going up onto my knees. I looked back again when suddenly a commotion sounded, I followed the civilian's gazes back towards the remnants of the ship.

Oh for the love of-! Did this big blue bastard not understand that he was supposed to be dead? I found myself growling wordlessly as I glared with pure hate in my eyes towards the monster.

"You killed Groot!" Rocket suddenly roared. My eyes widened in panic as the raccoon let out an enraged yell and charged at Ronan.

"Rocket!" I called in warning helplessly trying to stop the raccoon but deep down knowing that it did nothing.

Ronan did seemed surprised or concerned at the smaller furry figure raced at him, he didn't even give Rocket a second glance as he took only a moment to blast Rocket out of the way. I winced when I heard the sound of Rocket hitting a remnant of the ship.

"Behold!" Ronan shouted suddenly to the crowd as I forced myself up onto one knee, "Your guardians of the galaxy! What fruit have the wrought?"

"Guardians of the what now?" I groaned momentarily distracted as I looked over at Gamora who kept her own eyes locked on the menacing figure of Ronan.

"Only that my father and his father shall finally know vengeance!" Ronan continued to shout at the crowd a mad look in his oddly glowing eyes. From my vantage point a little higher I spotted Rocket, but almost immediately after I saw him I looked away focusing on Ronan. He looked around holding up his arms, "People of Xandar, the time has come to rejoice and renounce your paltry gods! Your salvations is at hand!"

I watched with growing panic as the mad man lifted his hammer up over his head shouting something in his native language that my translator couldn't understand. For one terrifying moment I thought it was over… but Quill had other plans.

"_O-o-oh child things are gonna get easier_,"

I didn't realize what was happening at first but when I did I've no doubt I made the strangest face as I looked away from Ronan towards Quill. The man was once again doing either the bravest or the stupidest things I had ever seen. He had gotten to his feet at some point, and he was now dancing, to add to this he was also singing along to the song.

"_O-o-oh child things are gonna get brighter_,"

I looked around at the civilians before I leaned a little towards Quill whispering confused, "Um Quill? W-why are you singing?"

"Listen to this words!" Quill declared point to Ronan while at the same time completely ignoring me.

"No-no don't. Don't do that." I whispered a little louder doing the signature cut motion with my hand as I continued to frantically get his attention, "No, really, Quill! Stop, stop singing."

"_O-o-oh child things are gonna get easier_," Quill continued to sing along as if I had never spoken, "_O-o-oh child things are gonna get brighter-_now bring it down hard! _Someday!_"

"Alright we've lost him," I decided shaking my head as I moved closer to Gamora, while Quill began really getting into the dance.

"What are you doing?" Ronan asked slowly lowering his hammer to star at Quill, clearly very confused about what exactly was going on.

"Dance off bro, me and you." Quill announced without hesitation giving a kick before he stopped suddenly and held out his hand towards Gamora nodding in encouragement as he called her name. Needless to say the assassin shook her head vigorously, Quill looked to me as his back up and I shook my head too.

"Subtle. Take it back." Quill recovered from our rejection quickly beginning to dance again.

Now fed up with this ridiculous spectacle Ronan shouted, "What are you doing?"

Quill smirked victoriously still getting down as he announced cheerfully, "I'm distracting you, you big turd blossom."

"Ooh, now I get it." I announced nodding in understanding looking away from the dancing Quill back towards Rocket. The distraction had worked, not even I had noticed Drax getting to his feet clutching the newly repaired Hadron Enforcer. I smiled as I watched with great satisfaction as Drax took aim, it happened in a second but I was content to see Ronan hammer shatter into pieces.

I was not content to watch Quill made a desperate dive. My eyes widened as I realized far too late what his intents were.

"Quill! NO!" I screamed fruitlessly reaching out towards him as if that would stop him from grabbing the powerful stone. The second before Quill's hand met the stone an image flashed through my head, of me reaching out desperately towards a glowing cube. I watched in horror as almost in slow motion Quill's hand closed around the purple stone. And then the storm began.

A dark wind blew knocking me off my feet as it formed a funnel around us. On the wind I heard Quill screaming, I lifted up my arm to try to cover my eyes as the wind kicked up blowing black and purple smoke everywhere around us. Briefly I glanced up to see my hair had at some point come out of the clumsy ponytail I had forced it into and now flew up above my like a white flame, twisting in the harsh wind.

I forced my eyes opened when Quill's screaming stop, sure that he had been killed just like the attendant who last touched it. But I could still make out a figure standing in the center clutching the purple stone, and briefly I wondered how long he could last. For here I could see the purple cracks breaking apart his skin causing him to look a bit like cooling magma.

My eyes widened when I heard another voice on the wind, I recognized it as Gamora's voice but I couldn't begin to make out what on earth the assassin was saying. I peered through the chaos focusing solely on the figure in the center who was now joined by another. I gasped when the second figure reached forward clutching his hand as the purple spread onto her as well.

I didn't know what they were doing. Maybe they were going out together, but then an idea struck me. Steaming from what I'd heard the Collector say about sharing power. It was a long shot but it was the best option we had at this point, the only option I could see myself living with.

I forced myself back up onto my feet stumbling a bit as I forced my way through the wind. I had to get to them.

I saw movement in the cloud and I realized I wasn't the only one doing this, I could barely make out the form of Drax moving towards them

I smiled a bit when I got close enough, I hesitated for a moment before I bravely shouted, "Geronimo!"

1 grabbed Gamora's hand and as soon as I did an all familiar rush of power spread from my Arm quickly spreading to the rest of me. Accompanied by a flash of pain. It was like I was touching the tesseract all over again, and I realized in many ways I was.

The feeling of my skin breaking apart was almost identical to the one I felt when I clutched the tesseract. Expert this time I wasn't going alone. I bite back my cry of pain, stubbornly planting my feet as I forced my eyes open.

The power among with the painted lessened and I realized why when I looked down spotting a new figure on Quill's other side, and a much smaller one coming closet. The second Rocket grasped Drax's hand the power lessened so much the pain became bearable.

But we would only be able to hold onto this for another minute, two tops. We needed a plan and now that I could really think I realized I had one. We might just survive today.

"You're mortal, how?!" An outraged voiced cried on the wind and I found myself smirking at the sight of Ronan in the storm.

My grip tightened on our last hope of life as Quill called over the wind, "You said it yourself, bitch. We're three guardians of the galaxy."

I watched Quill open his hand unleashing the full power of the infinity stone at Ronan, the blasted spread over the madman for a moment until as long last he died in a mini explosion. Then I lurched forward to save us, the new orb in my hand was the same as the others that we hand passed out in the beginning. It slammed down on the stone and the results were instant.

I let out a gasp as my legs gave way, choosing as the storm around us disappeared as if it had never been there. I was breathing heavily as I looked up grinning like an idiot as I announced in a smile but sure voice, "We are so much better than Kevin Bacon."

Quill laughed a little hysterically and I doubted that he actually found my joke funny, I suspected his laugh was more relief than anything. He looked down at the orb that now safely held the infinity stone only to look up and have a bit of a moment with Gamora.

"Well, well, well. Quiet the light show."

"Oh you cannot be serious. " I groaned reluctantly forcing myself back up onto my feet shook I could face the space pirate captain who was now surrounded by armed guards.

"Ain't this sweet?" Yondu continued as he walked towards us, "But you got some business to attend to before all the nookie-nookie starts."

"Just what we needed, another armed psychopath." I gasped sarcastically too emotionally drained to be afraid or concerned about the new danger we found ourselves in.

"Peter, you can't." Gamora gasped shaking her head as Quill held the stone hesitantly she gasped again warning, "Peter.

"You gotta reconsider this, Yondu." Quill tried using reason to convince his old captain, "I don't know who you're selling this to, but the only way the universe can survive is if you give it to the Nova Corps."

"I may be as pretty as an angel." Yondu said clearly not buying into Quill's reason as he pulled back his coat revealing some kind of red weapon, "But I sure as hell ain't one."

"Pretty frickin' insane though." I announced shaking my head.

"Hand it over, son." Yondu ordered holding out his hand, his tone leaving no room for debate. Quill looked reluctant as he pulled the orb out from behind his back, hesitating a long moment before quickly placing it in Yondu's hand before he could think better of it.

The captain's smiled chuckling softly signaling tho his men to stand down and head out. He turned to leave but stopped when Quill called, "Yondu. Do not open that orb. You know that, right? You've seen what it does to people."

If the Ravager captain heeded Quill's warnings he didn't show it as he turned away vigorously clutching the coveted orb. As his ship began to fly away I kept myself busy by examining my tongue. It seemed that when I first bit back my cry of pain I seemed to have actually bitten my own tongue which was now bleeding. Sighing with resign I called to the group, "So he's crazy."

"He's going to be so poised when he realized I switched out the orbs." Quill sighed pulling out an identical orb.

Gamora let out a short laugh of relief, I myself let out a cheer throwing my arms up in excitement.

"He's going to kill you, Peter." Gamora sighed voice thick with relief.

Quill looked up at the sky towards where the shop had just disappeared he sighed disappointed, "Oh I know. But he was about all the family I had."

"No he wasn't." Gamora announced confidently smiling at Quill.

"Aw dammit," I groaned out a curse when I realized what Gamora meant by that. I couldn't stop myself from smiling as I looked around at all of them, "Does mean I'm sick with you losers?"

Quill only laughed at me shaking his head, I turned away from him and Gamora. My smile faded when I spotted the heartbroken Rocket sitting dejected on the piece off wreckage. In his hands he grasped a small twig and from here I could see the tears threatening to fall.

Unable to help myself I sighed and slowly made my way over to the coon. I plopped down next to him carefully looking up when Drax sat down on his other side. I shared a smile with Drax as I began thinking of what I could do. But short of resurrecting Groot I didn't know what I could do.

But then I remembered I had been in a similar situation before, when Peter's Uncle Ben died. Drawing from that experience I slowly set my arm astound the quivering raccoon in a side hug. Drax reached over and began rubbing Rockets head. Rocket tensed for a moment glancing at the two of us before slouching down accepting out comfort.

I frowned suddenly when my HWT let out a charming chirp sound. Very confused I held up the device as a holographic screen appeared and on it flashed two bolded letters.

**Search Compete.**

I sighed sadly when I realized what this was. I had forgotten all about the search I had sent up on Flora Colossus. Reluctantly I skimmed the texts before me until one of them caught my attention. I re-read out at least four times, my eyes getting wider and wider each time.

"Rocket! Rocket!"I cried excitedly convinced that I wasn't seeing things. I shook the sad raccoons shoulder as I all but shoved the screen in his face. He let out a sniffle but read it all the same. Bye froze grabbing my wrist to hold it still as he re-read the text.

"We can bring him back."I whispered over joyed almost jumping to my feet.

Rocket's ears picked up smiling brightly revealing his sharp teeth as he released my wrist to clutch Groot's twig a little tighter. He looked at me and suddenly frowned a weirded out look in his eyes as he demanded confused, "When the neck did you sure your hair?"

"What are you- Oh my god! You gotta be kidding me!" I all but shouted as I pulled my hair around so I could look at the white. And the purple steak. If there had been any doubt before it was shot and buried now as I stated at the newly colored streak. Those damn infinity stones.


	15. Not Quite Forgotten

**_At long last the revision is complete! I hope you all enjoy the new version of the story and I am very excited to announced two prequels and one sequel not including the second guardians movie. I hope you all enjoy the story as much as I love writing it and don't fear Nixy wont be gone long :) _**

**_-Inquisitor Lily_**

I should not be laughing right now, this was a very serious unfunny moment and I was ruining it by laughing. I tried to, really I did, but every time I managed to make some progress on stopping the uncontrollable giggles that shock my whole form I would look up and see the very same thing that made me laugh so hysterically in the first place. We were standing in the Nova Corps main building, basically their helicarrier. Three days ago we had saved the galaxy from a raging psychopath, and therefore became better than Kevin Bacon, and we were now heroes.

But that wasn't what was so funny. We stood in front of a holographic image floating above a white table, but it wasn't even that that was so funny. No what I found so ridiculously amusing what the almost horrified look on Quill's face in response to said holographic image.

I looked up again wincing as I laughed when I saw the whole room staring at me. I gasped weakly struggling to get my words out, "I-I'm sorry! It just-it's his face!"

As I descended into another uncontrollable fit of giggles I heard the Nova Prime ask in a mix of concern and worry, "Is she alright?"

"We're not really sure. We think she's broken." Quill admitted honestly as I straightened whipping my eyes. He looked shocked when Nova Prime shot him a suspicious glare to which he responded, "Hey, we had nothing to do with it! We got her like this!"

Now with my breath under control I nodded at the room holding up my hands as I announced, "Alright, I'm done. Proceed with the seriousness!"

Our attention was returned to the holographic image of a space x-ray of Quill, the man himself leaned again the table as he asked in a confused voice, "So I'm not terran?"

"You're half terran, your mother was of Earth." Nova Prime clarified calming getting an edge of excitement in her voice as she glanced back at the image, "Your father, well, he's something very ancient, we've never seen here before."

"Um, just to be sure," I announced suddenly raising one hand as a thought came to mind, "You are familiar with the Asgardians right?"

"The what?" Nova Prime demanded.

"Oh, okay so they just screw with Earth. Got it." I said nodding as I reached back to scratch my head at this new realization. I didn't know whether to feel special or annoyed that the Asgardians only seemed to mess with us. Though there was a horrifying moment when I realized that in that regard Quill could be half-asgardian. And therefore half god… holy crap we would never hear the end of it!

"That could be why you were able to hold the infinity stone for as long as you did." Gamora reasoned pulling me out of my terrible train of thoughts.

"You're friends have arrived." Nova Prime announced shutting down the image as she smiled turning as Drax, Rock, and the adorably small newly planted Groot arrived. As it turns out the info I had found on the Flora Colossus had proven correct. The pot was a simple and small one but the little twig had taken root almost as soon as we put him in.

When I had arrived when the newly purchased pot, that no one had even considered buying when we realized all we had to do was plant him to get him back, Rocket tried teasing me for it. Until I announced that I was taking it out of the money I owned him for getting me out of the Kyln, which shut him up pretty quick. Either way Rocket flat out refused to let the pot of his sight, though I could hardly blame him.

"On behalf of the Nova Corps, we would like to express our profound gratitude for your help in saving Xandar." Nova Prime thanked up almost proudly until motioning towards a now familiar Nova officer, "If you would follow Denarian Rey, he has something to show you."

I tried to keep the knowing smirk off my face as we followed Rey out of the room, I had already been surprised with the surprise. Well at least I had been called in when there was a minor hiccup with said surprised but I had fixed that up. So I kept my mouth shut, just as I had been when I first uncovered it, because honestly I couldn't wait to see Quill's face when he saw it.

"So Nixy," Quill began as we walked appearing next to me like an annoying flea who would never go away. I couldn't suppress the groan when he repeated that damn nickname. It was bad enough that the others seemed to have taken to it, all agreeing that Phoenix was too long. I kept threatening to hit them but wasn't working.

"What do you want Quills?" I demanded with a newly made nickname of my own. When he had asked me about it I told him it was because he was such a pain in my side. He found it funny.

"You do realize that you are now stuck with a bunch of ex-criminals." Quill began in a teasing voice.

"Yeah, and an idiot." I agreed giving him an annoyed look, in a teasing voice of my own.

"Whatever you say Nix," Quill sighed carelessly tossing am arm around my shoulder, darn my shorter height! He smirked evilly as he announced, "But you are stuck with us!"

"Shut up and look at your surprise, jerk." I snapped annoyed as we stepped out of the building. Slightly pleased with Quill's gasp of shock when he saw the surprise.

"We tried to keep it as close to the original as possible. And with Phoenix's help we managed to salvage some of the original as well." Rey explained as the group stared at a shiny new Milano parked right on the takeoff pad. Ready for takeoff, and which a few extra rooms squeezed in where we could fit them.

"Yeah, unfortunately your stupid tape player survived and I got called in to install it. You're welcome by the way." I announced smugly patting him on the shoulder after he removed his arm from around me. I remembered something equally important turning to Ray hopefully, "Did you do the thing I asked?"

Rey winced a look of disgust on his face announcing hesitantly, "Yes, all the savaged parks were thoroughly cleaned."

"Thank god! The ship is clean everybody!" I called to the ground relieved.

"Thank you." Quill said honestly to Rey.

"I have a family." Rey confessed in response, "You're alive because of you."

I found myself smiling as a warm soft feeling warmed the area where my heart should be, assuming I still had one. I looked over smiling at Gamora and Drax who also seemed to be warmed by the Nova officer's confession.

"You're criminal records have also been expunged," Rey announced happily. Only to frown a bit when he remembered who he was talking to as warned us, "However I have to warn you against breaking any laws in the future."

"Huzzah!" I cheered happily that my name had been cleared.

"Question," Rocket suddenly interrupted, "What if I see something that I want to take and it belongs to somebody else?"

Rey looked genuinely confused glancing towards Quill as if to see if the raccoon was serious before he confirmed, "You will be arrested."

"But what if I want it more than the person who has it?" Rocket argued trying to come up with a scenario where he could rob someone.

"Still illegal." Rey insisted, already having second thoughts about letting us go.

"No, I want it more sir. Don't you understand?" Rocket questioned as if his reasoning was completely just for taking stuff. I chuckled amused as Gamora stepped in and began leading the smallest of our group away towards the new ship.

Drax came forward next and asked in an alarming calm voice, "What if somebody does some irksome and I decide to remove his spine?"

"Whoa…." I whispered eyes widened with the realization that Drax was not actually kidding.

"That… that's actually murder. One of the worst crimes there is." Rey confirmed looking at Quill and I in alarm, "So also illegal."

I'd say I was just as horrified as everyone else when Drax seemed surprised by this, but before we could explain to him his error he began to make his way to the ship as well satisfied that his question had been answered.

Rey now looked a whole lot less confident in this and I could tell he was debating locking us all up now.

"They'll be fine." Quill assured him seeming to read the other man's mind as he promised, "I'm gonna keep an eye on them."

"You?" Rey questioned in disbelief not at all convinced.

Quill got a weird look in his eyes looking at me for a moment before he gaze followed the other towards the ships smiling fondly, "Yeah. Me."

I waited until Quill was out of ear shot before I turned to Rey, "As the only one who is both underage and not a convicted felon, I'll keep an eye on them."

Rey smiled at me setting a hand on my shoulder as he announced, "You're a brave girl, Phoenix. But I do no envy you."

"Neither do I." I admitted nodding before I followed after my new friends onto the ship. At first everyone looked around in amazement at the new ship. But then everything got a little quieter and it took me only a second to realize why. With a smile I moved forward towards Quill's room where not two hours ago I had placed a paper wrapped gift on his bed.

The same I had seen so furiously shoo Rocket away from. And by the look on his face when he sat there reading the note attached, I knew I was right in my assumption that it was important. When I found it while scourging through the wreckage trying to find pieces we could use for the new one I realized it must have been from someone important to him.

I looked over at Gamora who was standing next to me to watch the moment, we shared a smile as I moved to lean on the entry way of the door. I didn't know who it was from, or where it came from but I didn't really care. All I really cared about was doing something nice for a friend. Even if it ended up with him crying on his bed. Which we were all pretending not to see.

In the box was a new cassette tape, he reread the letter before he set it into the newly refurbished system, now capable of playing more high-tech devices too. Gamora took a chance walking a little into the room as Quill looked up at us. I smiled at the two of them, they were so gonna get married, as Gamora swayed a bit along to a familiar some. I gave them there moment.

Meaning I literally counted to seven in my head.

"I call co-pilot!" I shouted suddenly completely ruining the moment as I raised my hand. I bolted for the deck just as Rocket's eyes began to widen. I heard him shout after me in anger and I swore I heard Drax give a big belly laugh.

I leaped over the seat landing perfectly onto the co-pilots chair smirking and laughing manically when I arrived. I would have taken the pilots chair, except it was Quill's ship so I supposed I could let him that that. Rocket began grumbling angrily about how I didn't have to carry around a pot that was heavier than me.

Quill settled down in the pilots chair as everyone moved onto the main deck ready to go off and do, I don't even know. Something fun hopefully. I smiled as we took off humming along with the new song that came with the cassette tape. Ain't no mountain high enough, was a great song even I had to admit that.

I loved the message in it. I remember when I was younger wishing that I had somebody in my life like that, who wouldn't stop at anything to keep me save. And it was a little scary now but I think I might have just found five someone's would might do just that.

The people on earth had long since forgotten about me, and I guess that was to be expected but now I had found myself on a spaceship full of people who never will. And it was one of the best feelings in the world.

And in the end I decided that I still blamed Quill for getting me into this whole mess. And I couldn't thank him enough.


	16. The Epilogue

Since I had been gone it seemed that no one had bothered trying to fix up that bar which had once been so popular on Knowhere, though looking down at the rubble I couldn't imagine anything being salvageable. Not that I was really complaining. The brief time that I had spent within it's rowdy walls hadn't been the most pleasant experience. If I had it my way I would have never returned to the site at all, if it wasn't for one tiny little annoying hindrance that would not leave me be. Shaking my head, I ignored the room, moving through the remains onto the much more important room.

The Collectors glorified prison/museum which had been so soundly tucked away behind the bar was relatively quiet, especially for a building that had just undergone a major remodeling via living bomb. Various shards of glass, rubble, and some questionable goo substance (which I really did not want to think about) littered the ground. Making multiple unpleasant sounds as my heeled boots made their way through it all. It was at last in the middle of this chaotic mess that I found the person I had gone so far to see.

Taneleer Tivan sat atop a ruined ledge, looking almost mournfully at the ruins of his twisted palaces while drinking something alcoholic out of a surprisingly intact glass. By his side sat the space dog, who would occasionally lean over to sniff curiously at the drink as if he thought he might like to try it.

I was so focused, and a little pissed off, that I wasn't even remotely surprised by the giant humanoid duck who sat with a drink on a higher ledge.

"So you've finally arrived." The Collector called eerily without looking in my direction, lifting up his cup to take a long sip of his drink.

"Sorry to keep you waiting. I got hung up saving a galaxy." I announced sarcastically crossing my arms while all but glaring up at the unusual man.

Now that I was finally here, I'll admit I felt a bit foolish. After all the trouble of lying to my friends and traveling back across the galaxy, only to find him sitting here in the ruins. All because some kleptomaniac psycho made a suspicious passing comment. But I just couldn't shake the need for answers, not when they were so stupidly close. This whole thing just didn't sit right with me no matter how I looked at it. So feeding off my uneasiness I feigned annoyance as I demanded, "You obviously already know why I'm here, which will make all of this go all the smoother. So tell me what I want to know and I'll be on my way."

"My, you are impatient," Tivan observed dryly. For the first time since I arrived he shifted in his seat to watch me, a smug smirk pulling up his lips as if he found me amusing.

Like a spoiled toddler, I stomped my heeled foot, now full on glaring at the infuriatingly calm man. One hand lifted to point accusingly at Tivan while the other tightened to a fist at my side. "Listen up you Lady Gaga wannabe, I am not in the mood for your cryptic bullshit! I had enough of that in the past few weeks! Everything I ever loved was ripped away from me before I even had a chance to stop it, and I damn well better get my answers! So either you tell me what I want to know, or so help me I will finish what that pink assistant of yours started and turn the rest of your precious collection to space dust!"

My chest heaved as I listened to the satisfying sound of my rant echoing off the remaining walls.

Now panting heavily I listened as my rant echoed off the remaining walls back at us. My jaw was clenched, teeth grinding together as I waited for the strange alien to respond. The Collector seemed unaffected by my threat, retaining his smile as he announced, "Don't be so dramatic, half-blood. I shall give you the answer that you seek."

"Half-blood?" I repeated lowering my other hand slowly, my anger slowly been converted into confusion. What could he possibly mean? Half of what? What had that stupid tesseract done to me exactly? Shaking all the thoughts from my head, I demanded no less sharp but more controlled, "What do you mean half-blood? Half of what? And why does it make me so special?"

"Because there has not been one of your kind in thousands of years," The Collector announced his grin turning a bit more menacing. "In fact I was sure the last of them had died off ages ago."

"And what exactly do you consider my kind?" I snorted in response crossing my arms again as I leaned heavily on one leg, thoroughly unimpressed. "Last I checked there was a whole planet full of humans, my kind, just to the right of a shiny thing called the sun, buddy."

The Collector seemed relatively amused by my response, and the dunk behind him even let out a quacking sound that almost reminded me of a laugh. Leaning forward to rest his elbow on his knee Trevan leveled me with a curious look, the glint in his eyes made me uneasy. Ominously he announced, "You misunderstand. Your blood is only half-human. It is the other half that is so interesting."

"The other half...?" I parroted my voice soft, feeling a bit like an echo that was only able to repeat it if he said it. My mind was racing, unintentionally going through everything I knew about human biology. And it felt like I had been given a pile of puzzle pieces that didn't go together. Although I can't say I ever knew her, I had always safely assumed that the late Anthea Stark had been human. But now, hearing this man speaking of another half... it seemed like the only thing that made sense. Unless... no, it had to be the tesseract. Narrowing my eyes, I found myself half asking half demanding, "Are you talking about my mother?"

"Perhaps I am," The Collector answered without actually saying anything remotely useful. He leaned back shaking his head as he lifted his drink. "I could also be speaking of your father. Though by your reaction I image that it is safe to assume that it was your mother."

"Great, so you're telling me the answers to all my problems has been lying in her grave for a decade?" I translated unhappily, being unnecessarily defensive at just the mention of my mother's name.

"No," The Collector corrected shaking his head. Then he paused, standing for the first time and pointing down at me, "You're carrying the answer to your questions on your wrist."

Almost on reflex my hand clamped down over my wrist, over my mother's necklace, eyes widened in shock as I tried to comprehend that he was being serious. That was the final straw of my patience, shaking my head I shouted, "Alright, I'm done with this! No more ominous bull! You said you'd tell me what I wanted to know, so do it! I've got all day!"

"Very well," Tivan nodded taking a sip again. "Tell me, Alexandria, how much do you know about the Olympians?"

Hello, friends and readers! At long last the wait is over! Mostly! I have finally found the time to weed through all my drafts to plot out the first sequel for the Girl the World Forgot! So I humbly announce the new part of Alexandria Stark's journey which I call 'The Girl the World Forgot: Who Found the Truth'.

I hope you all stick around to find out how the story goes, and I still plan on making one or two prequels (set in the Amazing Spider-Man movie and the Avengers movies or possibly the Thor movie, so many possibilities). If I do continue the prequels though I will be titling it something besides 'the girl the world forgot' just to split it up a bit for my sanity. I'll probably end up posting a lot of one-shots I've been thinking up with for no purpose.


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